Don’t Drink the Orange Juice: Woody Allen’s “Irrational Man”

Cinema | August 19th, 2015

Predictably, the critical reception of Woody Allen’s “Irrational Man” ranges across the spectrum, from haters like Lou Lumenick and Jessica Kiang to admirers including Richard Brody, David Rooney and Amy Nicholson. The director’s films, even more polarizing in the grim aftermath of the highly publicized February 2014 open letter by Dylan Farrow that revisited allegations of sexual abuse, continue to appear with clockwork regularity at the rate of one feature per year. While the auteur’s late career oeuvre – Allen is currently 79 – hasn’t been as consistent as his monster run in the 1970s and 1980s, Allen continues to attract A-list talent as well as the ongoing curiosity of cinephiles.

For the Allen faithful, tracking the critics is just as important as being able to say you’ve seen all the director’s movies, especially when the assessments contrast so radically from one another. For example, Lumenick’s disemboweling argues that “’Irrational Man’ is so clumsily staged and lethargically paced that it makes such clunkers as ‘Small Time Crooks’ and ‘Cassandra’s Dream’ look like minor classics.” David Rooney saw a different film entirely, claiming that Allen’s “plotting zings along with forward momentum in all the right places.” Beauty, certainly in the thematic ideas and stylistic concerns of Woody Allen, is in the eye of the beholder.

Revisiting the “Crime and Punishment”-inspired variations of murderous characters including Martin Landau’s Judah Rosenthal in “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ Chris Wilton in “Match Point,” Allen presents Joaquin Phoenix as Abe Lucas, a philosophy professor whose moribund academic trajectory brings him to the fictional Braylin College in Rhode Island. Despite the attentions of two beautiful women, unhappily married colleague Rita (Parker Posey) and vivacious student Jill Pollard (Emma Stone), Abe can’t snap out of his crippling torpor until an overheard conversation sparks in him the idea to kill a judge in an untraceable, “meaningful act.”

“Irrational Man” is more playful and relaxed than the dark and serious-minded “Crimes and Misdemeanors” and “Match Point,” a contrast that enhances, rather than detracts from, the similarities shared among the films. Undoubtedly, the previous two movies are superior, but Allen’s touches – including parallel voiceovers, flashes of wicked black humor, and visual rhymes sumptuously photographed by the terrific Darius Khondji – retain viewer enthusiasm from start to finish. The curious audio motif of the Ramsey Lewis Trio’s half-century-old recording of “The ‘In’ Crowd,” placed prominently and deliberately in the narrative, further piques interest.

Stone, reteaming with Allen after the lackluster “Magic in the Moonlight,” fares much better as a contemporary undergraduate than as a conniving clairvoyant of the Roaring Twenties. She makes believable (if not palatable) Allen’s traditional fantasy of the carefree, wealthy elite, infusing Jill’s dialogue with a clear-eyed pragmatism certain to frustrate any audience member hoping she would exhibit fidelity to Jamie Blackley’s puppy dog of a boyfriend. Stone and Phoenix are so good together that not even the awkward blocking of a bizarre tussle near an open elevator shaft can spoil the party.

One final note: “Irrational Man” was longtime producer Jack Rollins’ final collaboration with Woody Allen. Rollins died in Manhattan on June 18, 2015 at the age of 100.

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