Because of the intricacies of Abe's activities, the DVD that comes out may well have some deleted scenes, and will merit some commentary. There is also a question of omniscient observer integrity in this film; several characters narrate in mockumentary fashion (without face speaking to camera); even Abe narrates, as if from the afterlife.
Friday, July 24, 2015
"Irrational Man": a philosophy professor tests his own nihilism and creates a Hitchcock-like mystery
“Irrational Man” is the new black comedy about philosophy
from Woody Allen, and it didn’t stay on the course I expected as it
started. It migrated toward being more
like a Hitchcock mystery.
Joaquin Phoenix (whom I thought was going to quit acting
(story ) plays Abe, a philosophy professor newly hired at a college in Rhode Island. He
is quite slovenly and unappealing, with a sloppy pot belly. People (even his
boss at the outset) are asking him is he is “all right”. He soon meets another professor Rita (Parker
Posey) and takes after a student Jill (Emma Stone) who already has a likable
boyfriend Roy (Jamie Blackley).
Early on, he is lecturing about Kant, and whether it is ever
OK to lie. The film goes out of the way
to make all the college students (male and female) physically and personally
appealing.
At a social, attended by students, in a faculty home, he
finds a pistol, and shocks everyone with the “Russian Roulette” game, on
himself, known from the 1979 film “The Deer Hunter”.
He is questioning “why” he lives, and seems caught in the “meaningless”
that (coincidentally, we hope) Andrew Holmes in Colorado had demonstrated in
his notebook. (There is mention of the
horrific idea, of knowing what it is like to kill somebody, as if such an event
could be reversed – only in a dream.) Others call this “Abe talk”.
But when he learns that Rita has a custody problem
aggravated by a “badass” local judge (Tom Kemp), Abe suddenly has a reason to
feel he has a purpose in life, enough to get over his writer’s block. He can murder the judge, commit the perfect
crime, and never be a suspect. At this point, the movie sounds a little like a
game of Clue. The “poison” will be all
too simple to administer, and the actual event will pass quickly.
But the police are more onto this than Abe suspects, and
soon Rita suspects. Furthermore, the
police are ready to frame a previous legal assistant who somehow had access to
chemicals and who may have harbored a judge.
An existential crisis will follow, and Abe’s true colors may well come
out. He is capable of more direct
violence than we had suspected.
Because of the intricacies of Abe's activities, the DVD that comes out may well have some deleted scenes, and will merit some commentary. There is also a question of omniscient observer integrity in this film; several characters narrate in mockumentary fashion (without face speaking to camera); even Abe narrates, as if from the afterlife.
Because of the intricacies of Abe's activities, the DVD that comes out may well have some deleted scenes, and will merit some commentary. There is also a question of omniscient observer integrity in this film; several characters narrate in mockumentary fashion (without face speaking to camera); even Abe narrates, as if from the afterlife.
Now, when I moved to Minneapolis in the fall of 1997,
shortly after publishing my first book, I got a quick lesson in the value of
philosophy as an undergraduate major. A
senior at Hamline (who had run for City Council in St. Paul in the Libertarian
Party) arranged my lecture at Hamline.
Some last fall, I saw someone on the Metro with a build resembling Bryce
Harper’s with a stack of undergraduate books, reading “The History of
Philosophy”.
I saw the film Friday afternoon before a small audience at
Angelika Mosaic in Merrifield VA. “Southpaw”
was also playing at about the same time, but for today, I passed up the chance
to see Jake Gyllenhaal’s previously manly bod “ruined” by shaving and tattoos. I hope they’re temporary.
Wikipedia attribution link for picture of downtown
Providence RI, by P D Tillman, under Creative Commons 2.0 Share Alike License. I visited West Warwick in 2003 (late
filmmaker Gode Davis).
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