Underrated Woody Gem
9/10
Author: dweis007 from new york
5 May 2004

As a huge Woody Allen fan, I was delighted and surprised by this film. I have scarcely heard anyone mention it, but for my money it is the single most comically dense of all of Woody's films. There are so many truly impressive/hilarious/memorable one-liners that I'm amazed people don't quote this movie left and right. The setting, costumes, accents all add to the hilarity of the film--truly reminiscent of a Marx Brothers romp. Really outstanding among his pre-Annie Hall films. Only rivaled by Bananas in my opinion for simple laugh value.

Unlike any other of his films, this deals with his "deep" questions of death/metaphysics in an unflaggingly light and comical fashion. For instance:

-Sonja: But judgment of any system or a priori relation of phenomena exists in any rational or metaphysical or at least epistemological contradiction to anabstracted empirical concept such as being or to be or to occur in the thing itself or of the thing itself.

*Boris: Yeah, I've said that many times.

Not Woody's "best" film (see Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes and Misdemeanors), but perhaps his most laugh-filled. Satisfying throughout. I give it a 9/10.

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37 out of 41 people found the following review useful:
 
Woody Allen's best, and I own them all
Author: mrdemilleimreadyformycloseup from New England
4 July 2003

People go on and on about "Annie Hall," which I must say I love, but "Love and Death" remains, for me, the best movie Woody Allen movie ever made. Why?

First, I love Dostoyevsky, and his twisted take on Dostoyevsky is so hilarious, but also so informed, that it lands me on my ass. Second, his dialogue is so existentialist and yet so ridiculous ("Yes, but objectivity is subjective." "Not in any rational scheme of perception.") that it makes Ingmar Bergman look like a fool, which he isn't, but it's so much fun to deconstruct the big guy. Third, I love the scene when the little kid questions death about the afterlife. ("Are there girls?")

I love the one-liners, especially when, surveying the battlefield with all the bodies lying around, Woody's companion says "He was our village idiot." and Woody replies "So what did you do? Place?" Mainly I love it because it is intellectual but also as silly as hell. In the movie pantheon, Woody is up there in the godhead, along with Bergman and Dreyer. Alongside them, the world needs Woody, to make it laugh about things that they make people think seriously about.