An alcoholic philosopher decides to try his hand at committing what he believes to be an ethical murder, but the execution is neither comical nor tragic.
USA
3*
Director:
Woody Allen
Screenwriter:
Woody Allen
Director of Photography:
Darius Khondji
Running time: 95 minutes
Woody Allen likes to play it safe in all of his recent films. This safety, while often peppered with hilarious dialogue or neurotic characters teetering on the brink of hysteria, also makes many of his works, at least those of the past 20 years, mediocre and forgettable. There have been demonstrable exceptions, particularly when his actresses are given free rein to express themselves, or when he takes greater pains to construct a story with both a beating heart and a strong head.
For the former, the examples that come to mind are the hot-blooded whirlwind performance of Penélope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Cate Blanchett’s stunning portrayal of a narcissistic, delusional, alcoholic divorcée in Blue Jasmine; the latter include Mighty Aphrodite, which borrows from both George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and ancient Greek plays, as well as his magnificent Crime and Punishment-inspired Match Point.
Irrational Man is not a comedy and does not elicit a single laugh from the audience. In theme, it is closest to Match Point, replete with Dostoyevsky references (a copy of The Idiot lies next to his bed, he scribbles in a copy of Crime and Punishment, and the Russian novelist’s name is explicitly cited in a discussion with a student), but unlike his 2005 film, there is no thrill and no tension. Even the film’s most dramatic moment – a murder – is devoid of anxiety, and while the homicidal act takes place onscreen, the death occurs off-screen.
Joaquin Phoenix stars as Abe Lucas, an alcoholic philosophy professor who has just joined the faculty at Braylin College in the sleepy town of Newport, Rhode Island. He is a nihilist who believes philosophy can do little more but talk about life’s problems. Nonetheless, Allen gives us a CliffsNotes introduction to existentialist philosophers in Lucas’s classes and then proceeds to the much more dramatically satisfying situation that serves as the plot’s turning point: Lucas decides that he can give meaning to his life by helping someone in need, even if this means he would have to commit murder.
One day in a coffee shop, he overhears a woman complaining of a judge who will very likely take custody of her children away from her and give it to her ex-husband, who is friendly with the judge. Lucas, without knowing much more than what he discovers from this one-sided account, makes up his mind to kill the judge.
The other track on which the story advances involves one of Lucas’s students, Jill Pollard (Emma Stone), who has fallen in love with him despite her having a long-term, caring boyfriend. Jill is a terribly disappointing character, as much for Allen as for Stone, who has played much stronger women in the past (her attention-grabbing turn in Easy A immediately comes to mind). In Irrational Man, she starts off as a smart philosophy major who takes on her professor’s worldview head-on but very quickly becomes doe-eyed and infatuated with him, and she tries her best to lull him out of his rudderless existence. When she fails, she flings her body at him.
This is a terrible debasement and does not endear her character to the audience at all, particularly because we feel she has given up control of her life to a man who is tossing and turning in a wasteland of despair.
The mentions of the philosophers are little more than padding and serve little purpose other than to remind us Lucas is philosophically minded. The look of the film, as is usual in an Allen production, is competent without drawing any attention to itself. The single exception, however, is absolutely stunning and underscores the skills of master cinematographer Darius Khondji, for whom this film marks his fifth collaboration with Allen.
Towards the end of the film, when Jill is starting to suspect Lucas has had a hand in the death of the judge, she watches him alone out on a jetty, a silhouette against the radiant sunlight reflecting off the still water. But there is something unusual: Lucas’s silhouette seems to vibrate, even melt, around the edges where it meets the bright luminosity behind it. The shot is breathtaking and catapults the film’s visual language into the stratosphere, albeit momentarily.
This Woody Allen film is about as unfunny a movie as he has ever made. But unlike some of his other films, which at least worked still played with our emotions, this one lacks the vocabulary to get us roaring with laughter or our adrenaline pumping. Despite the intriguing premise of ending a life to infuse your own with meaning and intensity, this work is mostly forgettable, and the weak character portrayed by Emma Stone is very unfortunate.