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Rating: Sonja: "I feel half woman and half cow"
Boris: "I choose the half that gives milk".
"Love And Death" (in Italy "Amore E Guerra") is the last film that characterizes the first phase of Allen's production, the last film in which the director uses an impressive series of crazy scenes and slapstick gags in the style of "The Sleeper" but even more accentuated, basically you laugh uncontrollably from beginning to end.
The story is about Boris (Allen), the youngest of three brothers, in early nineteenth-century Russia. Boris is classified by the entire village community as a coward, unlike his brothers he has no particular physical attributes and is not much sought after by women "I grew up and became a man, a grown man. Actually, I was one meter and sixty-three. Which is not, technically, what is meant as a "grown man" in Russia; however, you can still have assets in the sun. Above one sixty, you can be a landowner. Below one sixty, you need a special permit from the Tsar"; he's a funny character, nice but insignificant even in the eyes of his cousin Sonja (Diane Keaton) whom Boris has been in love with since childhood. The advent of Napoleon will lead Boris to enlist against his will "Sonja: Dress warmly, it will be cold and... have fun", this experience will mark a new beginning for the protagonist, having become a hero he will finally be able to redeem his honor, but fate will reserve unforeseen twists for him and Sonja.
At first glance, "Love And Death" doesn't seem like a very complex film, but in reality, Allen manages to fully combine the two sides of his way of making comedies, the purely visual one and the intellectual one. The film can be seen as a satire on Tolstoy's "War And Peace" and historical novels in general, the director uses to demolish the real situations that arise during the plot with surreal scenes, for example when Sonja cooks snowballs for Boris during the cold Russian winter, in a time of great famine due to the Napoleonic wars. The film also targets the division of the two sides of life, the spiritual and mental, and the material linked to the body and the pleasures of the flesh. Allen creates a continuous alternation between ironic skits and complex philosophical dialogues between Boris and Sonja that lead nowhere, "Sonja: I am convinced this is the best of possible worlds". Boris: Well, it’s certainly the most expensive".
In the end, a practically perfect film, great rhythm, almost absurd comedy, and subtle irony coexist excellently, I can't mention all the memorable scenes "Love And Death" contains, watch it and enjoy it also because a Diane Keaton so brilliant and delightful is unmissable.
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