In Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors the theme is explcitly about
the triumph of bad characters and the failure of the good one.
I think, however, the movie is philosphically pretty superficial just
because it is so obviously driven by a desire to illustrate the
philosophical theme. The most interesting ethically relevant movies are
thickly rather than thinly ethical, grappling with ethical stories from
within the narrative/style rather than than merely generating the
narrative out of a predetermined theme. Woody Allen probably paid more
attention to philosophy classes in his brief time at NYU than did
Scorsese, but I'd suggest that Scorsese's films, in part because they
are not generally mere illustrations of ethical or other ideas, are
philosophically more interesting. Of course they are also more complex,
ambiguous, maybe even at times incoherent, but as Aristotle says you can
only get as much precision as the subject matter allows.
John M.
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