Irrational Man
Directed by Woody Allen
Starring Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Parker Posey, and Jamie Blakey
Most of Woody Allen’s films during the last two decades have been utterly forgettable — ephemeral and mechanical works whose titles and characters begin to blur in my mind. I can recall a few that conveyed the comic flair and intelligence of his best early work like Deconstructing Harry (1997), and a more recent one like Blue Jasmine (2013) that one remembers for the stunning central performance by Cate Blanchett as a beautiful neurasthenic. But most of the films look like the output of a director who has little left to say, but who feels he must compulsively (out of anxiety?) keep working — churning out a film a year. These films often seem like works produced off an Allen constructed assembly line, repeating motifs, situations and lines from his past films.
His latest, Irrational Man, is not as bad as some of his other recent films, like the utterly magic-less Magic in the Moonlight (2014), but is too often given to pop philosophizing dropping names of existentialist all-stars like Heidegger, Sartre and Kierkegaard and breaks no new ground. It contains a strong, persuasive performance by Joaquin Phoenix as an alcoholic, womanizing philosophy professor who takes a job at a small college in a striking-looking town. (Allen usually likes to set his films in moneyed places where privilege reigns, and squalor doesn’t exist.) Lucas has lost his zest for life, and seems to walk around with a permanent hangover. The role is devoid of any internality, and his despair, which is never really explained, is merely conveyed through a dour, melancholy look, a lot of sophomoric talk about meaninglessness, and showing off his nihilistic inclinations by playing Russian roulette in front of horrified students at an off-campus party.
Still, he captures some of the reality and speech rhythms of seductive, self-destructive professors I have known. He can offer clever lines about “much of philosophy is verbal masturbation,” speak fluently about the vast gap between theory and practice, and be convincing as a romantic fantasy figure for intelligent, impressionable co-eds. But whatever that is smart in the film gets lost in its dull romantic pairings and a contrived murder plot.
The first pairing is with a frustrated, sex-hungry science professor, who needs a new man and life, and literally throws herself at Abe. Given that the off-kilter, animated Parker Posey plays the professor, their scenes should have been truly funny. However, they remain moribund.
The more significant relationship is with a bright, curious student in his summer “ethical strategies” class, Jill Pollard (a pleasing Emma Stone), who he tries to keep at a distance. But as in so many Allen films the older man predictably falls for the younger woman.
The film’s turning point is when Abe decides to commit the perfect murder of a corrupt judge, not for love (done with much more verve and emotional depth in his Crimes and Misdemeanors [1989]) or money, but to create some existential clarity in his life through direct action. He succeeds in this Dostoyevskian act (the murder in Crime and Punishment provides a model), and is now capable of joy. Abe sees risk-taking as much better for his soul than therapy or abstract philosophizing.
The murder and its aftermath are treated neither in comic terms, nor as a thriller. The film just stumbles along with talk about guilt, and Jill’s pushing Abe to confess. It concludes by illustrating one of Allen’s demi-philosophical aphorisms: “You’re always searching for control, and in the end you’re at the mercy of the hoisted piano not falling on your head.” It’s a genuinely absurd climax that invokes neither terror nor concern for the fate of the characters.
The film’s conceit may not be original, but it’s suggestive, and some of the dialogue is sufficiently smart to keep our attention. However, like so many of Allen’s films over the last two decades, it seems knocked out — an incomplete draft for a film rather than a fully realized work.
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Irrational Man is playing at the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington, and at the Beacon Cinema in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. For show times at the Triplex click here; for show times at the Beacon Cinema, click here.
