If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. The guarantee that with each new year comes another mediocre Woody Allen film used to be something I would do my best to ignore. Then I continually found myself in situations on airplanes, where having theretofore avoided whatever new Woody had come out most recently, it would all of a sudden seem like a very appealing selection for in-flight entertainment. So I’ve come to terms with it and have even developed a newfound fondness for the forgettable slices of cake the 79-year old director has been making as of late. If you saw the trailer for Irrational Man, you may have thought to yourself that this looks like one of his duds, but in fact the main plot of the film has been mysteriously erased from said trailer, and this is actually one of Allen’s most twisted and enjoyable films from the past few years.
A lot of that has to do with its leading man, Joaquin Phoenix. He plays Abe Lucas, a philosophy professor whose reputation as a subversive and a drunkard precedes him. He takes a position at a small town university where he grabs the attention of two competing ladies, Rita (Parker Posey), a dissatisfied married science prof, and Jill (Emma Stone), a wide-eyed student who quickly falls for this mysterious man. A depressive shut-in, Abe arouses concern with his irreverent behavior, but that doesn’t stop him from further attracting Jill and getting closer and closer to her, which also garners suspicion about their relationship from everyone around. But suddenly, Abe’s outlook takes a dramatic shift when he takes on a moral mission. When he serendipitously overhears a woman emotionally discussing her woes about her ex-husband making a power play to take custody of their children because his lawyer is in tight with the judge. An idea is born: kill the judge, make this woman’s life better, make the world a better place…Right? Such is Abe’s justification/epiphany as he rediscovers a lust for his own life as he plans another’s death.
This dark spin finds Irrational Man operating in a mode in between Allen’s fluffier comedies and his thematically heavier work. The surface is all fluff, but that’s what makes the film so tonally strange. The light feel, and Darius Khondji’s beautiful, vibrant cinematography clashes with the macabre, making the film deliciously deceptive. The philosophical regurgitation and banal moral-play observations we’d expect from Allen are all here, but the variable is Phoenix, who makes no effort to fit the model for the director’s surrogate leading man. He’s clearly having fun here, at first indulging in Abe’s intoxicated aloofness, then turning on a dime as a gleeful prospective murderer. Indeed it is when Phoenix does the latter that it gives Irrational Man a sick sort of pleasure, and at times it feels as if Phoenix’s performance outwardly directs the film on its own, undermining Allen’s more typified choices. It’s one of the more physical leading turns in his films, and Phoenix’s naturally awkward deliveries and off kilter presence elevate it, making Irrational Man one of Woody Allen’s most thoroughly enjoyable films.
