Woody Allen’s ‘Crimes’
How many times can Woody Allen remake Crime and Punishment? That’s the question you may ask yourself while
watching Irrational
Man, his last film starring Joaquin Phoenix and current muse Emma Stone.
We know that Allen has long concerned himself with the question of man’s morality, and particularly how men justify their questionable actions and decisions. It’s a theme that’s cropped up in early dramas like Interiors through Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Husbands and Wives, Crimes and Misdemeanors and, well, plenty more.
Crime and Punishment, you may recall, is Dostoyevsky’s novel about Raskolnikov, a poor Russian student who takes an axe to a usurious pawnbroker, justifying it intellectually because she’s a blight on society and because he thinks himself above society’s petty morals.
Irrational Man, like other Allen projects before it, has a man contemplating the moral void, the ultimate question of ethical responsibility turned over to a guy who typically bungles it. It seems if you want to explore the folly of man, you dial up Woody’s comedies; and if you want the weight of existential crisis shoved down your throat, you go to his dramas, which are uneven, but consistent in their viewpoint.
After all, Allen’s the guy who famously justified wedding his wife’s adopted daughter, Soon Yi, by shrugging and saying, “The heart wants what the heart wants.” This has been a mantra (literally, in some cases) expressed by characters in his like-clockwork movies.
Irrational Man follows existentially battered college philosophy professor Abe Lucas (Phoenix) who can find no meaning in his life after his best friend, a journalist, dies in an Iraqi mine explosion. He takes a new teaching job at a remote campus, single- malt whiskey flask in tow, and proceeds to elicit the amorous attentions of both fellow professor Rita (Parker Posey) and student Jill (Stone).
Decent acting is put in by Phoenix and Stone, but it’s hard buying into a character who’s such a huge pill. Abe just goes on and on about how there’s no meaning in the universe, how nothing can arouse him in bed or catch his fancy, and turns down sex invites from the two ladies until you want to tell him to jump off a cliff or something, just for variety’s sake.
That his existential posturing is so insanely attractive to the two women, who find his boozy brooding “romantic,” is all a bit 19th century. When Abe demonstrates how Russian Roulette is played at Jill’s friend’s party — using a loaded gun aimed at his own temple — he’s not terminated the next day, as he would be on most campuses, but gains even more legend status. You see, he’s embraced life’s uncertainty by spinning the chamber and taking his chances with a bullet. Because, you know, YOLO! It wouldn’t be so bad if Abe’s self-serious posturing weren’t about a half century outdated. He’s so Camus, he should be wearing a scarf and smoking a pipe while speaking French.
Woody’s “serious” characters tend to talk in what he obviously believes is an “intellectual” manner — all brain, no emotion. They say stuff like (Jill trying to comfort Abe): “Despair is what Kierkegaard called the sickness unto death, Abe. And you suffer from despair.” Now, I defy you to find an American college student of either sex on any campus today who knows or cares what Kierkegaard had to say. Or how about this priceless nugget: “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” It’s like the guy speaks in maxims, hoping to be quoted in Bartlett’s alongside Sartre.
This intellectual discourse thing was turned to comic effect in the light but entertaining
Magic in the Moonlight, with Colin Firth’s coldly rational magician debunking passionate but sincere medium Emma Stone. Here, you just want this Abe guy to lighten up already. Not to spoil things here, but SPOILER: Abe and Jill overhear a woman complaining in a restaurant about a corrupt judge who’s awarded custody of her kid to a bad dad. Abe lights upon a reason to keep on living: he can get rid of the corrupt judge, somehow making the world a better place. By substituting his own sense of morality for the world’s ethical void, he will gain a new reason to live! YOLO!
Well, good for the tuna. This is the typical anti-hero dilemma served up in Crimes and
Misdemeanors (Martin Landaus’ eye doctor who sees no moral dilemma in getting rid of a clingy mistress), Match Point (about a tennis pro trying to get away with murder) and, oh, about a dozen other Woody Allen films. It’s clear Allen loves exploring the ethical gray zone, and one can deduce that it comes, perhaps, from examining his own life choices and seeking either validation or — as we might prefer — laughs. The other thing he clearly does in his movies, which often doesn’t happen in life, is deliver a lethal dose of karma to these anti-heroes. (Landau was an exception: his character seemed to be a commentary on the moral quagmire of the go-go ‘80s, when nobody bad ever seemed to get punished.)
Abe makes a choice that has lethal consequences, and as Jill grows disillusioned with his existential man pose, Rita starts to guess that Abe has done a bad, bad thing. Yet she still contemplates ditching her marriage and running off with Abe to Spain. You can almost imagine her cloudy inner reasoning: “Well, he may actually be a murderer, but… I kind of dig it!”
To me, it seems Irrational Man is Woody Allen once again on the analyst’s couch, or in a confessional box, imagining what would happen if you did one of the worst things imaginable. Would you be punished? Allen seems to have avoided answering that question in real life, opting instead to punish his characters and, alternately, his audience.