"When writing about [Woody] Allen’s recent movies, I haven’t addressed the over-all question of whether we can (or should) separate the artist from the art."

"I’ve always considered that idea absurd" — writes Richard Brody (at The New Yorker) — "because the very quality that makes movies worthwhile is how they express the personality, the character, the ideas, the experiences of their makers. The problem with learning about the artist from the art is that artists sometimes reveal themselves to be troubled, troubling people, and bring to light their ugly traits, ideas, or even actions. The depth of a complex work that deals with horrific but authentic aspects of life is sometimes found in the artists’ personal implications in those parts of life. There has always been something sexually sordid in Allen’s work...."

There has always been something sexually sordid about sex. Woody Allen famously asked and answered: "Is sex dirty? Only when it's being done right."

But Brody is tasked to review the latest Woody Allen movie. The ancient Allen — he's 82 — keeps cranking out a movie every year, with the help of the very best actresses — this time it's Kate Winslet — who don't shun him, presumably because the roles are luscious. The actresses must play the parts as written, but Brody can deviate from the usual movie reviewer stance, and this New Yorker piece is titled "Watching Myself Watch Woody Allen Films." So I find myself watching Brody watching. It's about Brody's feeling, his virtue, his being on the correct side of history, now that we're so obviously in the midst of The Reckoning.

Brody says he doesn't "remember reading about the accusations" that Allen had molested his daughter Dylan until he read Dylan's 2014 op-ed in the NYT.  He concedes:

It’s entirely possible that I had seen a headline or heard news back then but wrongly dismissed the allegations as the sort of rumor that’s spread during a bitter custody dispute.

I'm searching the NYT archive, and there were dozens of articles back in 1993, but yes, if you kept your distance, it looked like a bitter custody dispute. Notice how Brody inserts the word "wrongly." It was wrong to think, I will look away from this messy divorce, because now, in The Reckoning, you are supposed to care about what took place in private and respond when anguished women cry out for help.

Mia Farrow testified yesterday that her 7-year-old daughter, Dylan, was so distraught over the relentless attention of her adoptive father, Woody Allen, that she frequently screamed, "Hide me! Hide me!" when he came to visit her, and twice locked herself in the bathroom to keep away from him....

"He would creep up in the morning and lay beside her bed and wait for her to wake up," Ms. Farrow testified, as Mr. Allen sat a few feet away in the courtroom, scribbling notes and tearing pages from a legal pad. "I thought it was excessive. I was uncomfortable all along."

That's from "Farrow Says Daughter Became Distraught Over Allen's Relentless Attention," a NYT report from 1993.

In The Reckoning, you must show that you care, not just now, but in the past, when you thought it was okay to ignore what happened in private — who really knows? it's "he said, she said" (as people used to say all the time in the old days). So Brody knows to say it would have been wrong at the time to dismiss the allegations if he heard them, but he doesn't remember hearing them. But he must have heard them. There were dozens of articles in the NYT in 1993. He had to have actively looked away. Brody is still seeking cover for his past callousness. How severe is this Reckoning? Does Brody have cover enough?

Brody has written an awful lot about Woody Allen. Just last year, he published "The Existential Genius of Late Woody Allen" (New Yorker). How much pressure does he feel to disaggregate himself — at this late hour — from Woody Allen? In his new article, Brody looks back on many Woody Allen films and notes the various sexual themes. He then makes an important — but really very obvious — point about art:

Of course, the recognition of evil feelings and impulses isn’t the sole dominion of criminals, and guilt isn’t solely the torment of gross offenders; the virtuous are all the more likely to feel guilt on the basis of ordinary personal failings, the inherent tensions and conflicts of even constructive family relationships, romances, and friendships, ordinary compromises at work, a sense of responsibility for mere day-to-day passivity, willed indifference, self-delusion. An artist who can illuminate those powerful, ubiquitous, destructive, morally complex feelings and dramatize them in a range of public and private contexts, from professional to artistic to domestic, is one whose work is worth experiencing. 

And then Brody expresses his annoyance that the artist who's doing the best work might not be fully innocent or even a very good person:

It’s a horrible paradox that the modern filmmaker who explores those emotions most relentlessly, most painfully, and most compellingly is one who is accused of doing things that would give him good reason to feel them.

Paradox?! It's not a paradox. I agree that it's horrible though. The person whose art you want to consume is bad. That's not at all surprising. That tends to be the way it goes with artists. You'll have to swear off art, if you want to keep yourself pure.

But Brody is a film reviewer. He has to see these movies, and he must believe that the job is to write about the thing that appears on the screen, not your moral judgments on the people who caused the thing to exist.

The new thing is "Wonder Wheel," and it has its anguished woman crying out for help:

Scattered throughout the film are hints of torments, as when Ginny suggests that Humpty has an “unnatural attachment” to Carolina; when Ginny, in a crisis of jealousy, berates Carolina with angry and frantic questions: “Did he try anything? Did he touch you? Did he take your hand? Did he do anything? Did he kiss you?”... “Wonder Wheel” virtually shrieks with confessional anguish and is scarred with indelible regret.

How to listen to these women crying out from inside a work of art? Brody might want to say: I'm an art critic and this is art and it's my role to watch movies and tell you about them. But like a character in a Woody Allen movie, I've got a conscience, and I'm watching me watching Woody.

Like a movie, an article about movies needs and ending an here's what Brody gives us:

The world that [Woody Allen] depicts in his films is one in which the powerful abuse their power to prey upon the vulnerable and, until now, have, for the most part, gotten away with it. It’s also a world that, because of the courageous testimony of women including, crucially, Dylan Farrow, is now coming to light and, perhaps, to change.

Is that a satisfying ending for "Watching Myself Watch Woody Allen Films." No! The character, Richard Brody, absents himself from his own story. He endorses the "courageous... women" and retreats back into the dark, as if now, he's done enough, and he can get back to watching those movies without having to watch himself.