Diana Drumm sends us another review from Cannes...
A promising premise and captivating performances fall flat as a philosophy professor leaps after a misguided notion of the philosophical imperative, tumbling after one of his own theoreticals to disastrous results. Like much of Allen’s lesser filmography, Irrational Man dabbles in some of the auteur’s favorite subjects (philosophy, middle-aged male crisis, May-December or in this case June-November romances) and takes on more than it can chew, choking up in the third act.
The film’s tone shifts with the stumbled abandon of a dizzied drunk trying to make up his mind whether to stand or stay seated, from murky to light to dark, sprawling discussions to tensed farce...
All of this tonal teetering is yet more befuddled by incessant voice-overs and reference-riddled expository dialogue. Even so, Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone, two of the most onscreen-charismatic actors of our time, more than muddle through as the unlikely in real life but likely in a Woody Allen film romantic leads; she's the manic pixie dream girl falling for the middle-aged depressive. Parker Posey also shines in a near-thankless stronger-than-she-looks supporting role.
At Adair College (a callback to Allen’s Deconstructing Harry), the Big Man on Campus is not a son-of-an-oilman quarterback or a surprises-us-all nerdlinger or even a student, but incoming philosophy professor Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix). Packed with a propensity for pretense and a slight ponch, Lucas comes to campus with a reputation, not only by way of the academic page but also in the ways of the heart. Colleagues and students alike are drawn to this bad-boy intellectual (he wears t-shirts and flannel and regularly swigs out of a Scotch flask, and women drop like flies. Though they're seeing other people, he even catches both a philosophy student Jill (Stone) and an unhappy chemistry professor Rita (Posey) in his tobacco-stained web.
If (nearly) any other actor had played Abe, I would be shouting, “Ridiculous!” but Phoenix is a whole other deal. With his brooding smolder and heart-sunken hunch, his Abe is the exact sort of guy (arrogant, goading, with a damnable glimmer of charm) many of us regret being infatuated with in high school, college, early 20s and/or married to once. And oh how I hate myself for writing that… Similarly, Emma Stone is far too charming to be the A-personality Philosophy Major (those exist?). Worse though, her campus darling status is nearly enough to make you gag - her boyfriend actually says, “Everyone on campus desires you.”
As you'd expect from Allen, Irrational Man has capital-P Philosophy. Living true to his observation that “much of philosophy is verbal masturbation,” Abe’s lectures do plenty of name-dropping (Kant, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Husserl, etc.) but explain away philosophical concepts in the vague-est, least academic-sounding terms. (One example: he says philosophers make a study of life while existentialists took that one step further by asking, “What about me?”). Considering Love and Death and Allen’s intelligent essay work, it’s hard not to think that he’s intentionally dumbed down this subject matter and these characters for an audience of presumed philosophical plebs. He has his characters dance around the word "bourgeois" repeatedly inserting "middle-class" instead. In a very cringy mansplaining move while seducing Jill, Abe clunkily asks the female fourth-year philosophy major whether she’s familiar with Simone de Beauvoir and her assertion that women are defined by their relation to men as though this is some department deep cut. (He is seemingly taken aback that Jill is!) Abe may have a copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s "Crime & Punishment" with Hannah Arendt quotes written in the margins, but that does not mean he actually knows how to have a proper intellectual discussion. Pity to the students paying thousands to sit in front of Abe’s lectern, they’d get more out of The Ricky Gervais Guide To: Philosophy and/or Monty Python’s Bruce’s Philosopher’s Song.
From the outset of Irrational Man, Abe is stunted by a dissatisfied malaise that's common amongst the burnt-out creative class. After many groans and blank stares, Abe finally stumbles on a challenging moral predicament that breathes new frenzied life into him, consuming his unquenchable curiosity while making him more amiable to Jill and Rita’s advances. It’s this turnabout, hinging on a chance singular moment, when Irrational Man properly jumps the shark and falls into a ridiculously dark downturn, akin to many of the downturns in Allen’s late filmography (Small-Time Crooks, Match Point, Scoop). The action continues on a clumsy, clunky trajectory and Abe goes from being a charming unconscionable to cad to disturbing and deplorable.
As much as I hate how and where the plot goes, the titular “Irrational Man” keeps nagging and there’s the likeliest possibility that this unnerved reaction is exactly what Allen wanted, with Abe personifying the irrational Id and the audience forced to pick sides in the ongoing, unanswerable debate between the categorical and the subjective. It’s a Melinda & Melinda-esque mind game, and I won’t have a definitive answer for months, if ever.
Grade: C+