Allen serves up another blend of wit and whine
Irrational Man
Rating:
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Parker Posey Directed by: Woody Allen
Running time: 96 minutes
Woody Allen in Hannah and Her Sisters, famously referred to masturbation as a hobby. It’s a pastime the Woody Allen character in Irrational Man, a potbellied philosophy professor (but sexy!) played by Joaquin Phoenix, should have considered before striking out on a more extreme diversion on which the plot ultimately turns.
The less said about his leisure pursuits the better. Allen’s latest film takes place on the campus of Braylin college in Rhode Island, where Abe Lucas (Phoenix) has just set female faculty astir and the female student body aflutter merely by arriving hungover and/or drunk, with no visible luggage but much baggage.
Chief among the shaken and stirred are Rita Richards (Parker Posey), a teacher so unhappily married she seems about to dissolve into tears in every scene; and Jill Pollard (Emma Stone), the brightest light in Abe’s ethical strategies class. Her own ethics include throwing over her boring-nice boyfriend (Jamie Blackley) for the depressed-but-interesting professor. He has that effect on people. Braylin is a fictional campus, and not a very believable one unless you were cryogenically frozen in 1973 and only recently defrosted. Students use computers and tablets for note-taking, nothing more; there is but a single cellphone call in the picture; even the Internet is barely acknowledged. When Abe hears of an evil judge wreaking havoc on an innocent mother’s life, he confesses to Jill: “I couldn’t help but check him out on my computer.”
I checked out that phrase on my own computer, and it turns out there’s a simple verb that means the same thing.
Irrational Man should hit all the right buttons for Allen fans. There’s a romance — older man, younger woman, natch — that starts with witty banter and works its way down. There are offhand references to Russian authors, German philosophers and “French postwar rationalizing.” Casual alcohol abuse is seen in Abe’s single-malt crutch, and in Rita’s mixed drink of choice, white wine and whine.
There’s also just enough comedy to balance out the film’s ultimately darker themes. (“It’s funny how often your best ideas come under pressure of a deadline,” Abe muses at one point.) Allen enlivens the soundtrack with a live recording of The In Crowd by the Ramsey Lewis Trio; you’ll either want to buy a copy or never hear it again.
Non-fans will probably have stopped reading this review by this point, so to everyone else I suggest Irrational Man offers enough philosophical thrills to warrant watching. Seeing it might not be an ethical necessity, but it certainly qualifies as an ethical strategy.