Review: Irrational Man
An airiness masks the dark tidings of Woody Allen's latest feature, Irrational Man. Like its jazz-infused soundtrack, this intellectually saturated film is both jagged and insinuating as it grapples with a theme that Allen explored in the superior Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point and the barely redeemable Cassandra's Crossing: the morality of evil.
"I'm Abe Lucas...and I took a human life. Not in battle or self-defense, but I made a choice, I believed in it, and I saw it through." Indeed, Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) does not kill for those aforementioned reasons or for love or money, but rather because he believes he is doing good; that by taking direct action, he has made the world "a better place by an infinitesimal fraction." There's a yawning divide between thoughts and deeds, as he himself knows, yet this philosophy professor is ignorant to the fact that murder is murder and reasoning such an act away can only weaken one's moral code.
The act resuscitates Abe, who arrives blanketed in nihilism to assume his assignment to a small Rhode Island college. His reputation precedes him: he's an alcoholic with a history of sleeping with his students, he suffered a breakdown because his wife left him for his best friend. Or was it because his best friend was killed in Iraq? In any case, this paunchy schlub with the air of a stoner is perceived as a brooding god by the student body. One student body in particular, Jill Pollard (Emma Stone), has an instant fixation upon this man of mystery whose declaration that philosophy is nothing but "verbal masturbation" or that "Emotionally, I was at Zabriskie Point" only serve to fuel her romantic fantasies.
Jill is keen on saving this lost soul with the power of her love whilst professor Rita Richards (Parker Posey) flings herself at Abe as if he was the life raft to save her from drowning in her unhappy marriage. He resists both their advances, partly because to succumb would be wrong but also because his existential funk has paralysed him into passivity. And then he overhears a conversation - a woman in a diner is distraught over likely losing custody of her children because the judge is firmly in her ex-husband's corner. What if Abe could solve this woman's problem by getting rid of this corrupt judge? No one would ever suspect him, Abe thinks, and wouldn't it at least right one wrong in this world?
The film's first half, dominated by circular musings on morality, choice, and the randomness of fate, can come off as interminable claptrap, what with quotes from Kant, Kierkegaard and their ilk bandied about with abandon. Yet that groundwork bears fruit in the film's second half as its themes blink into the light.
"Life has the meaning you give it," one character says in the film, and that line speaks to the minefields that are traversed by the very nature of living. Reality versus perception, the mutability of thought versus the permanence of action, good versus evil. Yet the desire to do good can foster evil, and isn't escaping into fantasy more enjoyable than confronting harsh realities?
Even when one realises that Irrational Man is a noir at heart (the superb Posey could be any woman thwarted of happiness from any 1930s or 1940s noir), the overall lightness of tone is still an unsettling contrast. Despite some of its missteps (the establishing first act, the dueling voiceovers), this is actually one of Allen's more focused offerings. Phoenix is both creepy and charismatic, and the wonderfully expressive Stone impresses as the wide-eyed innocent who comes to realise the depths of her hero's (ir)rationality.
Irrational Man
Directed by: Woody Allen
Written by: Woody Allen
Starring: Jamie Blackley, Joaquin Phoenix, Parker Posey, Emma Stone, Betsy Aidem, Ethan Phillips
