Melinda and Melinda - 6

This is a more recent Woody Allen film in which he does not star. It is well done and plays on the dual story of fictional Melinda, one a tragedy and one a comedy. The film starts with two authors and friends talking in a restaurant about how they see the world. They then plug the same characters with similar details and overall plot and try to show that the events could be tragic or comedic. It ends say that conclusions are elusive and that one's outlook will determine reality. The comedy version is very funny with Will Ferrell playing an intelligent funny man, instead of his sometimes crude funny. The tragedy is very sad. Both are realistic in the potential of events leading to the tragic and the comedic. But as the narration shows even these smaller stories are set in a bigger reality that has one narrative. In the end Allen wants to put the comedic as a part of the overall tragedy of life. It is in many ways an escape from the truth of the tragic. I think that Allen in this case gets it wrong and that the tragic is really a small part of the overall comedy of life. In other words, I think that there is resolution in the story, rather than tension and pain ad infinitum. The next question that makes sense of these things is: How do we know one or the other, is their a perspective outside of our own? It is a question of epistemology that will help determine a storied kind of living.