– It seems that the only happy people in this movie by the end, are slightly crazy, and they are the course of future Mr. and Mrs. Wunch – a lovely name – and they’re the ones who don’t believe that you may even need happiness in the present life. So, everyone else seems to be left miserable, and I’m curious if this is if you are being playful with this, or if this is a serious comic commentary on what life looks to you at this point.
– This is my perspective, and has always been my perspective on life. I have a very grim pessimistic view of it; I always have, since I was a little boy, it hasn’t gotten worse with age or anything: I do feel that it’s a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience, and that the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies, and deceive yourself. And I’m not the first person to say this or the most articulate person on it: it was said by Nietzsche, it was said by Freud, it was said by Eugene O’Neill… One must have one’s delusions to live: if you look at life too honestly and clearly, life does become unbearable because it’s a pretty grim enterprise, you will admit. So, I do feel that those two people are the only two people that are happy: they are capable of deluding themselves; if I saw them at a party in real life I would think that they were foolish people, and dumb, and silly, and I would laugh at them, but they would be happier than me. So that is the way I feel about it.
Woody Allen at Cannes Film Festival Press conference for “You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yVPS8XBoBE[🡕]