The Talkies
Buckley, Christopher
history has a cutoff point: in their case it is the liberal-democratic society to which nothing more can be expected than "additions" and "elaborations." Indeed, it is one of Voegelin's great merits...
...But along comes another French invasion, and the scatterbrained, equally existentialist, Sonja leads Boris into a plot to assassinate Napoleon...
...Lining up for the chopping block in Love and Death are war, chivalry, God, romance, philosophy, and politics...
...Prokofiev plays in the background...
...But we can gain conceptually from Voegelin's insight...
...If only God would show me a sign," he sighs, "then I could believe...
...Boris rightly senses he is different from the others...
...An accident makes him a war hero,when the cannon he hides in is fired and he lands on a tent full of Napoleon's generals, causing the French to surrender...
...What's it like being dead...
...Like, Are they worth $3.50...
...You know the chicken at Kreski's restaurant...
...A big answer to the biggest question, but earlier Boris poses a more relevant question where he pauses in the middle of another existential monologue to wonder, "What if we're just a bunch of absurd people doing things with no rhyme or reason...
...His family is a collection of upper-middle-class idiots and psychopaths...
...Allen, and in the past he has been brilliantly absurd...
...But more intrigued by the fair Sonja, his cousin (Diane Keaton...
...What remains is a formless and endless now into which all history is compressed...
...by Christopher Buckley / Woody Allen is in the business of making funny movies and writing funny pieces for the New Yorker...
...Yet man cannot live without meaning, so the great question is whether the next civilizational phase will result in a more congealed condition of mass-totalism, with the overwhelming consequence that men will be further stripped of any loyalties to traditional institutions...
...36 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 197 history has a cutoff point: in their case it is the liberal-democratic society to which nothing more can be expected than "additions" and "elaborations...
...What can we say about the future...
...Hence, such ideologues must deny any existential validity or meaning to the times preceding their own...
...Sonja eventually learns to love Boris, though at first when he reaches out to touch her in bed she says, "No, not here...
...But we can gain conceptually from Voegelin's insight...
...The crucial question to which such speculations lead is always: is there a way out within history...
...Democracy and industrialism continue to drive the planet toward an "ecumenic age," whichwill have long since shed itself of the validation of individual vision...
...I'm an admirer of Mr...
...The voice-over heightens the expectant tensions: "...but isn't all mankind ultimately convicted and executed for a crime it never committed...
...What remains is a formless and endless now into which all history is compressed...
...The pace is fast, some of the gags are terribly funny,"Love and Death" and Allen moves beyond his own conventions to include scenes worthy of Monty Python, Buster Keaton, Mel Brooks, or even the great Chaplin...
...Through a trick of fate, he marries the girl of his dreams, the herring merchant having accidentally shot himself...
...But now, many films later, Allen's existentialist dilemmas are making it harder and harder to laugh at his movies, and if the trend of his current film, Love and Death, continues, audiences will have to start asking their own existentialist questions...
...On the eve of war, Sonja marries a herring merchant and the unwilling Boris is packed off to fight...
...What gets in the way of the humor is the author/director/ actor's persistent hammering away at the Big Questions, which is funny for ten minutes, amusing the next ten minutes, and boring the rest of the time...
...The pace is fast, some of the gags are terribly funny,"Love and Death" and Allen moves beyond his own conventions to include scenes worthy of Monty Python, Buster Keaton, Mel Brooks, or even the great Chaplin...
...His father has realized great wealth by "buying a small plot of land," a six-by-six-inch piece of turf he carries around in his cloak, swearing, "Someday I will build on it...
...But along comes another French invasion, and the scatterbrained, equally existentialist, Sonja leads Boris into a plot to assassinate Napoleon...
...36 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 197 history has a cutoff point: in their case it is the liberal-democratic society to which nothing more can be expected than "additions" and "elaborations...
...Yeah...
...Keeping both of Voegelin's recent books in focus, we may be helped by his description of the ecumenic age (from Alexander to St...
...One of Voegelin's most important statements is that in the present ideological climate history has no meaning for man, it has meaning only for the total mass...
...The first age ended in failure, rescued only by the Apostle when he transposed the mundane expectations onto the plane of eschatology...
...But Love and Death is a film which would succeed were it not for excess absurdity, and in that light, Boris' question poses a troubling problem for the author...
...Or Death...
...Love and Death opens with a shot of clouds spreading across a brilliant, blue sky...
...We cannot make such predictions about our ecumene as Paul made about his...
...It's worse...
...Voegelin's view cautions us against taking this prospect, or any other prospect, as inevitable, but present circumstances do seem to propel us toward more of the same...
...again, they must also stop history with the imminent accomplishment of their own design...
...If only God would show me a sign," he sighs, "then I could believe...
...He always reminds us of his latent genius, philosophy...
...What gets in the way of the humor is the author/director/ actor's persistent hammering away at the Big Questions, which is funny for ten minutes, amusing the next ten minutes, and boring the rest of the time...
...Democracy and industrialism continue to drive the planet toward an "ecumenic age," whichwill have long since shed itself of the validation of individual vision...
...The result is a philosophical profession of faith, with vast consequences for our dialogue with the author...
...a Latin American revolutionary, after stealing seven hundred pounds of cole slaw to feed his guerrillas, will ask himself, quite seriously, Is stealing justified as a means toward a political end...
...On the surface, this underlying movement manifests itself as a "state of crisis," so that, as Voegelin writes in From Enlightenment to Revolution, "remedial forces, while perhaps present, are socially ineffective": "the spiritual and moral strength for the task is lacking in the ruling group...
...On the eve of war, Sonja marries a herring merchant and the unwilling Boris is packed off to fight...
...The black drill instructor in the Czar's Imperial Army is a touch from Blazing Saddles...
...Sonja escapes, and Boris is left to await the firing squad...
...An accident makes him a war hero,when the cannon he hides in is fired and he lands on a tent full of Napoleon's generals, causing the French to surrender...
...He understands that the two key notions of our age, "total mass" and "spiritual power," have no transcendent source and are basically organizational principles...
...You know the chicken at Kreski's restaurant...
...a Latin American revolutionary, after stealing seven hundred pounds of cole slaw to feed his guerrillas, will ask himself, quite seriously, Is stealing justified as a means toward a political end...
...Or, as Diane Keaton, Allen's leading lady, says to him at the end of one four-minute monologue, "Oh Boris, you aren't going to quote Aquinas again, are you...
...Sonja eventually learns to love Boris, though at first when he reaches out to touch her in bed she says, "No, not here...
...Indeed, it is one of Voegelin's great merits that he shows how the accumulation of subtle shifts within a civilization bring about major changes of orientation...
...Why fight a war when it's so easy to become a refugee...
...The black drill instructor in the Czar's Imperial Army is a touch from Blazing Saddles...
...Why believe in God when He shows us no visible signs except suffering, and "the best thing you can say about Him is that He's a tremendous underachiever" ? I have no argument with these painful queries...
...Voegelin's view cautions us against taking this prospect, or any other prospect, as inevitable, but present circumstances do seem to propel us toward more of the same...
...But now, many films later, Allen's existentialist dilemmas are making it harder and harder to laugh at his movies, and if the trend of his current film, Love and Death, continues, audiences will have to start asking their own existentialist questions...
...What I do have an argument with are repetitious, unfunny soliloquies...
...But Love and Death is a film which would succeed were it not for excess absurdity, and in that light, Boris' question poses a troubling problem for the author...
...A man in one of his films will pause before buying a pastrami sandwich at the deli to wonder if there is a moral imperative involved...
...The result is a philosophical profession of faith, with vast consequences for our dialogue with the author...
...Yet man cannot live without meaning, so the great question is whether the next civilizational phase will result in a more congealed condition of mass-totalism, with the overwhelming consequence that men will be further stripped of any loyalties to traditional institutions...
...Here Voegelin abstains from religious speculation and makes of Christianity a mere historical force, with Paul rather than Christ at its center...
...this is unfortunate, because such discussion is generally left today to the mostly foolish elucubrations of "futurologists," whose future resembles the present as one egg resembles another...
...What's it like being dead...
...He is also in the business of asking big questions, mixing existentialism with melodrama...
...Boris is ecstatic, but the Lord pulls a fastone, and in the penultimate scene, we find him standing outside Sonja's window, Father Death at his side...
...His first "mystical experience" occurs at age nine, when Death, a striking figure resplendent in white robes, meets him in the woods and tells him, "We will meet again...
...These secular ideologies are really the result of what Voegelin calls "pneuma-pathology," a disease which reads the ideologue's personal vision into the whole of human experience...
...Why, the movie asks, did man do such stupidthings back in the nineteenth century...
...Hence, such ideologues must deny any existential validity or meaning to the times preceding their own...
...And when Allen hides in a cannon during the battle with the French, we expect Buster Keaton to come soaring out when the cannon is (of course) fired...
...He is also in the business of asking big questions, mixing existentialism with melodrama...
...The Village Idiots' Convention, where town idiots from all over Russia meet to discuss new techniques of idiocy, derives from Monty Python's Flying Circus...
...Through a trick of fate, he marries the girl of his dreams, the herring merchant having accidentally shot himself...
...His first "mystical experience" occurs at age nine, when Death, a striking figure resplendent in white robes, meets him in the woods and tells him, "We will meet again...
...This raises the further question: is a new "revelation" and its corresponding human experience necessary for our ecumenic age—or is the Christian revelation durable enough to rescue us from failure...
...Boris rightly senses he is different from the others...
...Love and Death opens with a shot of clouds spreading across a brilliant, blue sky...
...Why believe in God when He shows us no visible signs except suffering, and "the best thing you can say about Him is that He's a tremendous underachiever" ? I have no argument with these painful queries...
...Lining up for the chopping block in Love and Death are war, chivalry, God, romance, philosophy, and politics...
...Prokofiev plays in the background...
...The little philosopher becomes intrigued by Death and God...
...Hence it is agitated by an indefinite series of revolutions through which the ideologue, afflicted by pneuma-pathology, mono-maniacally insists on impregnating the masses with his spirit...
...I'm an admirer of Mr...
...Boris is ecstatic, but the Lord pulls a fastone, and in the penultimate scene, we find him standing outside Sonja's window, Father Death at his side...
...Voegelin does not pursue these reflections...
...What can we say about the future...
...The little philosopher becomes intrigued by Death and God...
...He understands that the two key notions of our age, "total mass" and "spiritual power," have no transcendent source and are basically organizational principles...
...Yeah...
...Sonja escapes, and Boris is left to await the firing squad...
...On the surface, this underlying movement manifests itself as a "state of crisis," so that, as Voegelin writes in From Enlightenment to Revolution, "remedial forces, while perhaps present, are socially ineffective": "the spiritual and moral strength for the task is lacking in the ruling group...
...We cannot make such predictions about our ecumene as Paul made about his...
...Enter antihero, a nice Jewish kid from Brooklyn, a Russian conscientious objector with no qualms about his lack of chutzpah.--) The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 35 Boris Grushenko, a young Russian living during the time of the Napoleonic wars, is a horny intellectual, a coward, a frustrated mystic...
...What I do have an argument with are repetitious, unfunny soliloquies...
...Paul) to understand our own...
...Hence it is agitated by an indefinite series of revolutions through which the ideologue, afflicted by pneuma-pathology, mono-maniacally insists on impregnating the masses with his spirit...
...And sure enough, enter an angel of the Lord to tell him Napoleon will grant pardon in time...
...Why, the movie asks, did man do such stupidthings back in the nineteenth century...
...Like, Are they worth $3.50...
...The first age ended in failure, rescued only by the Apostle when he transposed the mundane expectations onto the plane of eschatology...
...Keeping both of Voegelin's recent books in focus, we may be helped by his description of the ecumenic age (from Alexander to St...
...A big answer to the biggest question, but earlier Boris poses a more relevant question where he pauses in the middle of another existential monologue to wonder, "What if we're just a bunch of absurd people doing things with no rhyme or reason...
...These secular ideologies are really the result of what Voegelin calls "pneuma-pathology," a disease which reads the ideologue's personal vision into the whole of human experience...
...His father has realized great wealth by "buying a small plot of land," a six-by-six-inch piece of turf he carries around in his cloak, swearing, "Someday I will build on it...
...Indeed, it is one of Voegelin's great merits that he shows how the accumulation of subtle shifts within a civilization bring about major changes of orientation...
...Prudently remaining within his historicophilosophical framework, Professor Voegelin gives no answer...
...Here Voegelin abstains from religious speculation and makes of Christianity a mere historical force, with Paul rather than Christ at its center...
...Love and Death is a tale of misadventure set in Tolstoy's Russia...
...she asks...
...Allen's genius makes these scenes eclectic and not plagiaristic...
...For a while, they share an idyllic cottage romance, living, as the times are hard, on a diet of sleet and snow...
...It's worse...
...Voegelin does not pursue these reflections into the future...
...she asks...
...Or Death...
...Prudently remaining within his historicophilosophical framework, Professor Voegelin gives no answer...
...Or, as Diane Keaton, Allen's leading lady, says to him at the end of one four-minute monologue, "Oh Boris, you aren't going to quote Aquinas again, are you...
...Voegelin joins the most sharp-sighted historians, who answer with Polybius: the very mechanisms which supply nations or civilizations with elements of their greatness, work also to their downfall...
...Voegelin joins the most sharp-sighted historians, who answer with Polybius: the very mechanisms which supply nations or civilizations with elements of their greatness, work also to their downfall...
...The conspiracy miscarries (of course...
...And sure enough, enter an angel of the Lord to tell him Napoleon will grant pardon in time...
...The crucial question to which such speculations lead is always: is there a way out within history...
...The conspiracy miscarries (of course...
...This raises the further question: is a new "revelation" and its corresponding human experience necessary for our ecumenic age—or is the Christian revelation durable enough to rescue us from failure...
...Why duel over a woman when there's enough of her to go around...
...His family is a collection of upper-middle-class idiots and psychopaths...
...Why duel over a woman when there's enough of her to go around...
...Voegelin does not pursue these reflections into the future...
...A man in one of his films will pause before buying a pastrami sandwich at the deli to wonder if there is a moral imperative involved...
...Paul) to understand our own...
...And when Allen hides in a cannon during the battle with the French, we expect Buster Keaton to come soaring out when the cannon is (of course) fired...
...this is unfortunate, because such discussion is generally left today to the mostly foolish elucubrations of "futurologists," whose future resembles the present as one egg resembles another...
...Allen's genius makes these scenes eclectic and not plagiaristic...
...One of Voegelin's most important statements is that in the present ideological climate history has no meaning for man, it has meaning only for the total mass...
...More troubling, at the moment, than Love...
...Why fight a war when it's so easy to become a refugee...
...again, they must also stop history with the imminent accomplishment of their own design...
...More troubling, at the moment, than Love...
...Enter antihero, a nice Jewish kid from Brooklyn, a Russian conscientious objector with no qualms about his lack of chutzpah.--) The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 35 Boris Grushenko, a young Russian living during the time of the Napoleonic wars, is a horny intellectual, a coward, a frustrated mystic...
...For a while, they share an idyllic cottage romance, living, as the times are hard, on a diet of sleet and snow...
...He always reminds us of his latent genius, philosophy...
...Love and Death is a tale of misadventure set in Tolstoy's Russia...
...by Christopher Buckley / Woody Allen is in the business of making funny movies and writing funny pieces for the New Yorker...
...The voice-over heightens the expectant tensions: "...but isn't all mankind ultimately convicted and executed for a crime it never committed...
...But more intrigued by the fair Sonja, his cousin (Diane Keaton...
...The Village Idiots' Convention, where town idiots from all over Russia meet to discuss new techniques of idiocy, derives from Monty Python's Flying Circus...
...Allen, and in the past he has been brilliantly absurd...
...Indeed, it is one of Voegelin's great merits that he shows how the accumulation of subtle shifts within a civilization bring about major changes of orientation...
Vol. 9 • December 1975 • No. 3
