Irrational Man – movie review

I unashamedly love the way Woody Allen weaves such colourful and engaging stories on screen and also generates some great acting performances. This one concerns an alcohol-riddled, womanising, professor of philosophy called Abe (Joaquin Phoenix), held in the highest regard for his academic achievements, but who has lost all meaning in his life. That is until an overheard conversation provides him with a reason for being. Let me elaborate.

Abe is at rock bottom emotionally. He is in the midst of an existential crisis. It appears the joy has been sucked out of him. Soon after arriving to teach at a small town college in the US, Abe becomes involved with two women. Rita (Parker Posey) is a lonely fellow professor who wants him to rescue her from her unhappy marriage and Jill (Emma Stone) is his best student, who becomes his closest friend. While Jill loves her boyfriend Roy (Jamie Blackley), she finds Abe’s tortured, artistic personality and exotic past irresistible. Even as Abe displays signs of mental imbalance, Jill’s fascination with him grows. Pure chance changes everything when Jill and Abe overhear a stranger’s conversation and become drawn in. Once Abe makes a profound choice, he is able to embrace life to the fullest again, but his decision sets off a chain of events that will affect him, Jill and Rita forever.

Throughout his career Woody Allen has exhibited a fascination with philosophy. He’s lampooned it in comic essays and plays, and explored philosophical issues more seriously in films like Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point. In Irrational Man, his trademark wit stands out. It is a playful musing on the fallibility of reason in the face of reality. It is both quirky and endearing, and who better to showcase the pivotal characters than Phoenix and Stone, who are … well … credible? Phoenix can in one moment play rumpled and the next debonair. Stone is the thinking man’s crumpet, if you could please pardon the irreverence of that remark. Trying to resist temptation would prove foolhardy for any man, especially when, in this case, she is making all the advances.

It is a juicy picture that Allen presents, storytelling that is alluring and witty and can’t help but draw you in. And just when you fear Allen has painted himself into a corner, from which there is no plausible out, comes another flourish that has you metaphorically high-fiving for its audacity. What, I ask, can be better than that?

The settings, as is usually the case in Allen movies, provide an additional allure. In this case, Rhode Island is just beautiful. I now must find a way to get there.

Every time I see a Woody Allen film I look forward, with great anticipation, to the next. Now again, I see why. Rated M, Irrational Man scores an 8 out of 10.

Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Meredith Hagner and Parker Posey
Release Date: 20 August 2015
Rating: M

Alex First