Why Woody Allen films were important to me

When we were in high school, I was the shy guy in the group. It was a boys’ only school. Some of my friends had girlfriends. Others didn’t. I didn’t. I always felt like I was missing out on something. But I didn’t really want girlfriends. I just wanted to have some friends and some good experiences that I could share with my friends. All I ever did was study. I was made to study. It made me depressed. I was the only child. There were only my very neurotic parents who never had any patience for anything that didn’t appeal to them. They were begrudgingly married to each other by their ambitious parents and they had decided they were going to take out their grudges on everyone in the vicinity. They didn’t like each other. Not one bit. All their emotions were buried six feet under the ground. I don’t know what happened in their lives that killed their emotions. They didn’t like emotions. They didn’t like anyone who showed emotions. That included me. So they tried their best to keep me from doing anything that brought out any emotions in them.

I was in need of emotions. But my parents forgot that children have emotions and express them sometimes. They probably even forgot that they ever had emotions when they were growing up. All they cared about was their dry lives, and how successful they were because of it, and thus how great they were in making the ‘sacrifices’ and ‘compromises’ to get to where they were in life.

The few friends who showed me sympathy, I clung on to them for dear life. Then I was introduced to Woody Allen. This comedic, philosophical genius seemed to know all the answers, and his stories, which had severely dysfunctional characters, all had happy endings. For the first time, I felt like things might not be as bad. It felt like all the dysfunctional characters in my life had a purpose and that we were following a script, and that everything would be alright in the end. I never felt like I was the central character of his films (most often played by himself). But I wanted to be that person. I sought to get out of my world of constant artificially-induced stress, and be a more relaxed human being who would be able to communicate with the outer world without succumbing to fits of rage. I wanted to be easy, less intense, less sad.

Because not only were my parents helicoptering around me, at the same time they were showing the middle finger to the rest of the family. Eventually people got tired fighting with them and left. Ironically, that is what they wanted. But for themselves as individuals, not for each other. Which meant, they also couldn’t stand the sight of each other, on most occasions.

How could people in Woody Allen’s world be so easy-going? How could they be so ok even though things don’t go their way? It baffled me, so that more I watched more I yearned to be in that world. I developed a secret desire to swap parents. I spent more and more time amongst other families, watching them as they went about their daily routines. I wanted to know whether this was a cultural thing or something particularly wrong with my family. The more I watched the more I realised it wasn’t a cultural thing and it wasn’t because those people in the movies were happier than we are. There was something wrong with my family. I just couldn’t figure it out.

During the few instances when my mother asked me about my feelings, I told her about my experiences with my friends’ families, to which she replied, they all seem happy-go-lucky on the surface. I didn’t understand cynicism. I took her word for it. I defended my ‘family values’. I didn’t know better. But it all seemed bizarre to me that my parents would be shouting at each other one minute, then pretend everything was ok the next so that we could go to a movie or restaurant. All the while we had to pretend that nothing was ever wrong. We had to forget that they ever had a disagreement or that tempers flared. Everything was under the rug in a moment’s notice.

I felt sad, often, and for me, there was only one cure for this sadness, the Woody Allen films. Later on when I emigrated, I heard people saying how immigrants are escaping their war torn homes for a comfortable life in Europe and the US, and then not leaving. I thought, I emigrated not because my country was war torn but because of completely different reasons. My home was torn by forces that are more relatable in the western world. Would anyone ever understand?

To comfort me, I was following one of the most controversial of western artists, Woody Allen. Woody Allen films are not the happy-go-lucky films that make non-westerners dream of the American dream. Quite the contrary, his films are the reflection of the decadence and decline of western civilisation, something that would weird you out and make you feel good about your own life watching it thousands of miles away. But to me it didn’t, because in Kolkata, thousands of miles away from New York City, life was facing the same predicament as that in New York City. We had imported western civilisation lock, stock and barrel, and forgotten to read the fine print and best before date.

So I cried when the #MeToo movement exposed and vilified Woody Allen. It was gross, and there was no turning back. It felt like someone just cut the ground from under my feet. Here I was, based my whole life on the ‘teachings’ of Woody Allen to get through my difficulties, and suddenly it appears he’s actually the villain? Sigh.

I still liked comedy, and I tried putting Jerry Seinfeld on the pedestal of American east coast liberal mind-set that I had made for Woody. But this did not alleviate the anxiety. Maybe they will find something on Jerry Seinfeld, then I would have find someone else to follow. Woody Allen films still remained in my brain, like a ghost town after a nuclear holocaust, contaminated forever by the toxic image of him (allegedly) sexually assaulting his daughter.

My infatuation for bleak TV dramas took centre stage for a while, my own depressing state of mind resonating with it. But I couldn’t nurture it. Drama never had the same effect on me as comedy. Now, unfortunately, comedy is dead. Everything that I escaped as a kid is coming flooding back into my memories again. Feels like the sewage of sadness bursting, comedy not being able to fill the cracks in the pipes anymore.

In fact, I might have lost interest in American culture (or ‘Americanism’) completely. I feel that my parents were victims of the honey trap that is the American dream. Everything about their lives was about Americanism. Having one child, being competitive, encouraging the learning of all things western such as western classical music, American films and literature, and also religion (but which was more in a covert sense). I never got to appreciate Indian culture while I was growing up, and feel very inadequate in defending myself in an international environment.

I no longer understand why I was so fascinated with Woody Allen. But like falling in love for the first time, his films will always have a place in my heart. And this is because his films opened many possibilities in my imagination, some directly and some unintentionally. For this I will forever remain grateful.

The box of American dreams that came packaged with promise of great fun, wealth and eternal happiness will need discarding though. The pain, suffering and isolation that comes from opening the box and using its contents was never advertised. I think this is what Woody Allen films really helped bring out, the shameful secrets under the veneer of American prosperity. Sometimes I wish my life wasn’t contaminated with this horse shit.