Lies

I went through my Woody Allen phase in high school.  Over the course of about two years, I probably watched about thirty movies he wrote, directed, or was somehow attached to.  I didn't love all of them, but I loved enough of them that I would (and still do) defend the artistic merit of his oeuvre to those legions of people who "hate Woody Allen."

In the 80's, those haters would have based their feelings on his work itself.  It's an acquired taste, and I certainly understand it's not for everyone.  But by the time I made it to high school, Woody Allen had entered the Michael Jackson "I hate his entire body of artistic work because of the decisions he has made in his personal life" arena.  I didn't have lots of people clamoring to take this cinematic journey with me - mine was a solitary appraisal. 

The mid-90's wasn't a particularly bitter or dark period in Allen's filmography, although it can logically be assumed that in his life things were a mess.  He truly seemed to bury himself in his work, never relenting from his usual one or two films per year schedule.  Although I haven't seen it in years, one of the movies that sticks with me the most from this period is 1997's "Deconstructing Harry."

The film is one of the most furious of the director's career, a personal examination of life versus art, and one of the finest dissections of the artistic process and the solace it can provide its creator.  Often described as a cross between Allen's own "Stardust Memories," Fellini's "8 1/2," and Bergman's "Wild Strawberries" (which the film's structure is an obvious allusion to), it manages to transcend these inspirations and become something that (especially for the usually guarded Allen) comes across as very raw and personal.

"Harry's" ultimate conclusion is that the main character functions better in art than in life, and what is art but a carefully wrought illusion; a sort of refinement and distortion of truth?  And isn't a distortion of truth also known as a lie?  Art cannot help but lie.  Even art based on truth - based on personally experienced events, cannot help but be viewed through the fun-house mirror of human perception.  

It seems that the line between art and life has blurred to the point where they are interchangeable.  If a film like "Harry" is one man's refinement of his own emotions towards an ultimate goal of catharsis, carefully guarding the truth and constructing his house of cards with slanted fragments, things like Facebook (or this blog) are the exact same beast, taken out of the realm of Hollywood and existing within the lives of wholly average people.

We have been given a chance to artfully arrange other people's perceptions of our lives in ways hitherto impossible.  Some of us worry about it more than others, but even the "edgy" revelations that sometimes populate the everyday digital realm are little more than elements within the facade we so carefully construct around ourselves.  I could post on Facebook a carefully edited picture of myself and it would convey a certain aspect of who I want people to believe I am.  But is it not just another card in my carefully constructed house of lies?

Inevitably, the house of cards comes tumbling down, and we are left exposed.  It is within these shocked moments that the true character of any person really exists.  We either boldly and nakedly, with nothing left to hide, pour everything forth in a mad rush of truth, or we (more commonly) frantically scramble to pick up the pieces and start rebuilding our walls.  We deny, and we lash out.  Some of us commit suicide.  

The early 90's were years of scandal for Woody Allen, and those things, seemingly put to rest, have recently been unearthed, the wounds opened anew.  Like back then, it boils down to the word of two people, one claiming, the other denying.  They can't both be telling the truth.  One of them is lying.  Boldly, solemnly, "aww shucks I can't believe this is happening" lying.  As is always the case in these situations, the only people who will ever know the truth are the two people directly involved.  

When it is revealed that the quiet man down the street has been collecting human bodies in his house, feasting upon their flesh, and making decorative furniture coverings out of their skin, it is the common thing for people to say, "I had no idea!  He seemed so normal!"  But at this point in my life, I am beyond the point of being surprised by such revelations, as my understanding of human nature is that it is almost completely founded on illusion, both the ones we present to others, and the ones we present to ourselves.

This understanding only escalates my inherent lack of trust in people.  I try to overcome it, and it's not to say I don't still enjoy people - I am fascinated by the shards of truth that reside in the artifice, and I enjoy trying to ferret them out and put them together.  It's impossible, but I can't help doing it.  

It's also why I have never been one of those people who "hates Woody Allen."  I still enjoy his work, and support his right to make it.  There are always a thousand different angles to the truth, and any one person's perception of it cannot hope to encapsulate them all.  If I chose to completely avoid people with horrible secrets in their hearts, or skeletons in their closets, I would never be able to leave my house.

If art and life are one and the same, I suppose it seems fair and logical that both are open to critical evaluation.  But I have to stop short.  Everyone has the right to create art and send it out to the world - art that they control, that they are able to polish and which reflects the particular sentiment they are trying to convey, however powerfully or successfully.  That is the province of the gifted, to create art that helps us better understand ourselves and the world.

But life, however carefully and artfully we try to arrange it, has an all-too-human way of failing us.  Of slipping out from between our fingers when we least expect it.  As Bob Dylan said, "Even the president of the United States sometimes has to stand naked."  And when that happens, some of us point and laugh, some of us reject the situation outright through heady condemnation, and others of us are overwhelmed by waves of empathy.  We allow the person the courtesy of their dignity, as we would hope others would do the same for us.

For it is not only emperors and presidents that sometimes have to stand naked.  Sometimes, so do we all.