“For most of my life,” Erich Hatala Matthes says in his introduction, “I’ve thought of Love and Death as my favourite movie.” As a “philosophy-minded adolescent” who went on to become a professor, he was drawn to its philosophical discussions and referential comedy. But when Woody Allen married his ex-partner’s daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, and was accused of molesting his daughter Dylan Farrow, then seven years old, his feelings changed. Now when he thinks about Allen’s films he feels “confusion, anger, and betrayal”.
What should he do with these feelings? Can he despise the creator but still love the film? Do the moral lives of artists affect the quality of their work? Should we stop engaging with art produced by people who do bad things? And where, to quote the title, which is itself a quote from GK Chesterton, do you draw the line? Hatala Matthes’s book aims to give us the tools to make these decisions.
