CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS: Through the Ethical Lens

‘’We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions. Moral choices. Some are on a grand scale. Most of these choices are on lesser points. But! We define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are in fact the sum total of our choices.’  Woody Allen’s movie Crimes and Misdemeanors ironically closes on that open ended note keeping the audience contemplating over their existence and the pursuit of seeking truth to find the meaning in their existence. Human life is construed by the choices a person makes during the course of his life and how those choices impact others usually invites the peoples’ judgment on right and wrong. Human choices are guided by a moral framework, distinct and unique for every free being yet philosophers around the world have come together to consolidate a few theories of ethics on the basis of patterns that human’s manifest. In the movie Crimes and Misdemeanors, the characters hold strong moral positions endorsing various ethical theories and how it impacts them in perceiving the concept of right and wrong deeds. This paper is an attempt to analyze the ethical positions that the characters believe in and how it influences the surroundings around them.

The plot of the movie revolves around two men, Judah Rosenthal and Cliff Stern whose lives are intertwined one way or the other and there is an effort by the directed to compare and contrast the approach towards life of these two men. Judah, the protagonist of the movie who is trying to veil an extra marital affair that is complicated out of proportion, is at the very start portrayed as a man who does not let religion guide his decisions. He bluntly states that ‘god is a luxury that I can’t afford’ to his blinding patient Rabbi Ben who tries to bring him into confessing his sin to his wife. In that scene, Judah pleads to reason and justice against the law of the god. He says ‘What good is the law if it prevents me justice?’ It is very clear that he condones the concept of a religious code of conduct and takes the position of an ethical egoist throughout the movie.

Extremely flustered with his neurotic girlfriend, Judah conspires to ‘get rid of’ her with his brother Jack. When finally the task is accomplished and Judah is informed of it, he is suddenly overwhelmed with remorse. The guilt strikes him hard and he loses his sleep for nights. The movie shows how Judah had a religious father who based morality in the commandments of divinity and perhaps that upbringing of religious affinity had lingered with him such that it subtly manifests itself at few instances. Judah is shown to fear god when he gets to know about the completion of the murder and comments ‘God have mercy on us, Jack’. He also remembers what his father said to him that ‘the eyes of god are on us always’.  We can also analyze Judah’s act through a utilitarian perspective where in his action brought happiness to the greatest numbers and it justified the killing of an individual in its fulfillment. So we could justify the act on the ends it delivered such that the importance of the means could be subjugated.

The movie is very strongly inclined towards how strong the idea of religion is in the lives of humans when it comes to taking moral decisions. But it also emphasizes on the contrast that there is a constant struggle to break free from the divine code of conduct to adopt an ethical framework to suit a person’s temptation to sins. The concept of ‘sight’ and ‘eyes’ is used in the movie in more than literal sense and consistently there is a strife to escape that sight and that is why Judah comments to Ben when he is turning blind that it is a virtue as he can’t see evil.

A very poignant scene in the movie is when Judah visits his old home and remembers his family discussing about morality on the dinner table. His father and his aunt take opposite moral stands. His father, a god fearing man, judges every action with its nearness to the religious code of conduct and claims ‘if you don’t follow god’s rules, he will punish you.’ He also affirms the fact ‘that which originates from a black deed will blossom in a foul manner’ and goes to the extent of choosing god over truth.  Whereas the aunt totally refutes the thought and take a consequentialist stance reaffirming that ‘might makes right’. She says that if a person does not get caught after a sin he is ‘home free’ and absolved of any sin.  Finally, we see that Judah confirms his egoist stance when in the last scene he speaks of a new dawn and his flourishing life to Cliff. He claims that if he had to be punished, he would have been and now that all his guilt is fading and he can come to terms with his conscience.

Throughout the movie we can see a parallel story progressing of Cliff, his troubled marriage and his new love interest, Halley. When he confesses his love to her, she clearly is troubled by the thought as it was immoral to fall for a married man. I believe throughout the movie Halley has a very objective approach to taking decisions. Infact when Lester, a successful filmmaker says ‘If you play your cards right, you could have my body’ she replies by saying ‘wouldn't you rather leave it to science’. I think she perhaps followed a Kantian framework of ethics. Although, throughout the movie I believe the ethical framework that suffers the most is Kant’s deontology as the characters walk over and crush the whole concept of categorical imperatives in their decision making and confide in a totally irrational pursuit of moral decisions. But there are various instances through which the director subtly emphasizes the importance of reason which is the only tool to question the basis of value judgments. It warns us of the slippery slope and questions till what extent we can go to justify the insignificance of our ethical blunders. Judah supports this when he tells Jack that ‘one sin leads to a deeper sin’. 

On a concluding note, I believe that the movie endorses the concept of Moral Relativism. It highlights that ethical frameworks differ from person to person and it is very difficult to shake their beliefs. In the closing scene, both Judah and Cliff resort to different opinions on the perpetrator of the murder. While Judah gives abdicates the executor of all the crimes due to good consequences, it is difficult for Cliff to digest the fact that one can absolve oneself from such a heinous crime. The scene thus has a loose ending, giving the audience the space to take their own moral position on the act thus signifying the very essence of ethics that is relativity and subjectivity.