On one thing both the critics and the general viewing audience are in agreement: this is not a good movie. Probably even a bad movie. Although here the general public was more favorably inclined [6.6 at IMDb] than the critics [42% at RT].
And I basically agree with the critics. It was frustrating to watch.
Analogous perhaps to being blown away by the lyrics of a song in which the music is rather, well, bland.
The characters [and the plot] basically come off as “contraptions” that exist mostly to allow Woody Allen to probe [yet again] the usual philosophical themes that pervade his films.
Here’s the thing though: They are basically my own philosophical themes as well.
So that’s why you are reading this. And that’s why I included the film on this thread.
Meet Abe: A philosophy professor.
This kind:
Since he has become aware of his inability to change the world, he has…been living in a state of deep nihilism and arrogant desperation.
Remind you of anyone? Indeed, according to Abe, “…there’s a difference between a theoretical world of philosophy bullshit and real life, you know? Real, nasty, ugly life that includes greed and hate and genocide. Remember if you learn nothing from me you learn that much of philosophy is verbal masturbation.”
Also [my own personal favorite]: Abe: “…it’s very scary when you run out of distractions.”
But then in the end it comes down to this: Will Abe [Woody] blink?
Oh yeah.
Or does he?
IMDb
[b]Joaquin Phoenix gained 33 pounds for the role on his own, because he thought the character would look like that.
The title is a slight reference for a George Bernard Shaw’s famous quote: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him. The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself. All progress depends on the unreasonable man”.
The film is partially a modern-day re-telling of Dostoevsky’s famous 19th century novel ‘Crime and Punishment’, about a university student named Raskolnikov who, deeply troubled by the fact that he can’t change the world like Napoleon Bonaparte, decides to murder a pawnbroker to prove that he is morally superior to other people. He justifies this murder by telling himself (and eventually others) that he did it to rid the world of a vile woman whose death would make the world a better place. This is strikingly similar to the plot of ‘Irrational Man’, where the protagonist Abe - a university teacher - murders a judge, justifying it by saying it was helping a woman in need, but really he did it to satisfy his own ideals. Both Abe and Raskolnikov take a dark satisfaction in partially revealing their role in the murder (Raskolnikov taunts a fellow university student about who committed the murder, and Abe has fun guessing how the killer did it at a dinner). In both stories, a young woman (Sonya in ‘Crime and Punishment’ and Jill in ‘Irrational Man’) urges the man to turn himself into the police when an innocent man is wrongly accused of the murder. Woody Allen’s appreciation of the source material is evident in two scenes, the first being when Abe comments about how “Dostoevsky got it right” in relation to his ideas about human existence, and more directly when Jill finds a copy of ‘Crime and Punishment’ open on Abe’s desk. [/b]
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_Man_%28film%29
trailer: youtu.be/ZvOnxL2pKbI
IRRATIONAL MAN [2015]
Written and directed by Woody Allen
[b]Abe [voiceover]: Kant said human reason is troubled by questions that it cannot dismiss, but also cannot answer. Okay, so what are we talking about here? Morality? Choice? The randomness of life? Aesthetics? Murder?
…
Jill [voiceover]: I think Abe was crazy from the beginning. Was it from stress? Was it anger? Was he disgusted by what he saw as life’s never-ending suffering? Or was he simply bored by the meaningless of day-to-day existence?[/b]
And here we are…the difference between Irrational Man and, say, Crimes and Misdemeanors. In the later the philosophy was ingeniusly intertwined in the plot itself. It all seemed entirely plausable. Here the plot just seems hokey, contrived.
[b]Abe [voiceover]: Where to begin…You know the existentialists feel that nothing really happens until you hit absolute rock bottom. Well, lets just say that when I went to teach at Braylin College, emotionally, I was at Zabriske Point.
…
Rita [to Abe]: Hey, if you’re ever bored and you want someone to give you the real lowdown on who’s fucking who at this college, just let me know.
…
Abe [to the class]: So, Kant would artgue that in a truly moral world, there’s absolutely no room for lying. Even the smallest lie destroys his precious categorical imperative. So, Kant would say that if a killer came to your house, looking to kill the man hiding upstairs and asked where he was, you’d be obliged to tell him. In his perfect world, you know, you couldn’t lie.
Student: Yeah, I can see the logic that if you open the door, even just a crack, you accept a world where lying is permitted.
Abe: Okay, then, you’d say if the Nazis came to your house hiding Anne Frank and her family, and asked if anyone was in the attic, you’d say, “Ja, the Franks are upstairs”. I doubt it. Because there’s a difference between a theoretical world of philosophy bullshit and real life, you know? Real, nasty, ugly life that includes greed and hate and genocide. Remember if you learn nothing from me you learn that much of philosophy is verbal masturbation.
…
Abe [to the class]: Okay, Kierkegaard. When making everyday decisions we have absolute freedom of choice. You can do nothing or anything. And this feeling of freedom creates a sense of dread. A dizzy feeling. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.[/b]
Or as some might point out: To molest or not to molest your own daughter.
[b]Rita: The students all love you but of course you’ve raised some eyebrows with the faculty.
Abe: Do you ever get discouraged teaching?
Ritas: No.
Abe: You don’t ever ask yourself what the hell it’s all about? Another school. Another batch of kids. Sweet kids. Average kids. Nice, but mostly mediocre. They’ll grow up to be those people who shape the world with their ignorance or misinformation or passivity…
…
Jill [who is young and beautiful and able to attend a top notch university]: I found your view of existence too bleak for me. It was like there were no redeeming joys or pleasures.
Abe: Okay. Why are you taking philosophy? What do you want out of it? Because if your goal is to try to figure out what this bullshit’s all about, forget it.
Jill: But you write books, you write papers…
Abe: Well, let me tell you, when I look back at all that verbal posturing, my group thought that we were going to be so special. I marched in every bullshit political demonstration. I spent six months in Darfur getting food to starving families, I wind up with meningitis. I was in Bangladesh. Yeah, you know, you want to see a difference, to save the world. But when you see what you are up against…
…
Jill [on Abe’s reputation as a womanizer given Simone de Beuavoir’s narrative]: Do you find that fulfilling? Many women and one-night stands?
Abe: I did at the time. It had a certain frantic quality. One day it stopped being exciting. I couldn’t find distraction anymore in that usually reliable painkiller, the orgasm.
Jill: Why not?
Abe: I couldn’t remember the reason for living, and when I did it wasn’t convincing.
Jill: That sounds scary.
Abe: It’s very scary when you run out of distractions.
…
Rita: What have you been doing?
Abe: I’m trying to finish this book I started long ago.
Rita: What’s it about?
Abe: About Heidegger and fascism. Just what the world needs. Another book about Heidegger and fascism.
Rita: How’s it coming?
Abe: Um, I’m blocked, I can’t write.
Rita: Why?
Abe: I can’t write 'cause I can’t breathe.
Rita: What would get you breathing again?
Abe: The will to breathe, inspiration.
Rita: You need a muse.
Abe: I’ve never needed a muse before.
Rita: I hope you’re not going to send me back out into the rain after sleeping with me.
Abe: I’m trying to write. [/b]
Actually, it turns out he’s impotent. Existentially as it were…
Jill [voiceover]: The truth was I was attracted to Abe. Despite, or was it because, he was a lost soul. There was something about his pain and sensitivity that tapped into my romantic fantasies. It was exciting going to museums and seeing movies with him. He was truly an original thinker. The problem was he had no zest for life, no joy, no clear reason for living, which alarmed me. I wanted so much to help him…
And [basically] this is what the critics were reacting to.
Abe: I’ve given up. It’s all bullshit. You know, my bullshit book on Martin Heidegger is not gonna make a scintilla of difference to the world.
Jill: Why do you say things like that? How do you know that?
Abe: I set out to be an active world changer and I’ve wound up a passive intellectual who can’t fuck.
First Rita, now Jill…?
Jill: Despair is what Kierkegaard called the sickness unto death, Abe. And you suffer from despair.
Abe: I’m well aware of what Kierkegaard thought. But he was, in the end, a Christian. How comforting that would be.
Then comes that conversation overheard in the diner. The ones that sets a murder into motion.
[b]Abe [voiceover]: Everything about killing Judge Spangler turned me on. The idea of helping this woman, of taking action, of ridding the world of the kind of vermin that makes the world an extra hell for all of us. I was intrigued by the creative challenge of bringing off the perfect murder. It was a high-stakes risk, but the risk made me feel alive.
Student: Why continental philosophy?
Abe: Because, you know, continental philosophy deals with problems much more exciting and personal than the analytic tradition. You know, the existentialist philosophers were trying to find out not just what does something mean, but what does it mean for me?
For one thing [it turns out] it means he can rationalize a murder.
[b]Abe [celebrating Judge Spangler’s death with Jill]: Life’s ironic isn’t it? One day a person has a morass of complicated, unsolvable problems, you know the world seems black, and her troubles seem overwhelming, then in the batting of an eye, dark clouds part and she can enjoy a decent life again. It’s just astounding.
…
Abe [voiceover]: My writing was flowing, the creative juices unblocked. I was happy and enjoying a sense of well-being, and I’d begun an affair with Jill…and it was carried along on the momentum of the sheer joy of living. The thought that I had once been indifferent to existence seemed preposterous.
…
Abe [voiceover]: I’m Abe Lucas and I’ve murdered. I’ve had many experiences and now a unique one. I’ve taken a human life. Not in battle or self defense, but I made a choice I believed in and saw it through. I feel like an authentic human being.
…
Abe [to his class]: Today we are going to discuss existential choice. That life has the meaning you choose to give it. And we’ll examine Jean-Paul Sartre’s wonderful insight, Hell is other people."[/b]
Solution: Knock them off.
[b]Jill: You killed Spangler…I saw your book. I saw you wrote “Spangler, the banality of evil”. You must have decided that he deserved to die.
Abe: I made the choice to help that woman. You had it right the other night…I always taught you to trust your instincts. Not everything can be grasped by the intellect. If it feels right, it often is. This was the meaningful act that I was searching for.
Jill: You can’t just take it upon yourself to take someone’s life.
Abe: Well, I thought it was a very reasonable thing to do. She hoped he’d get cancer. Hoping is bullshit. You see, you have to act.
Jill: You can’t believe it was moral, what you did.
Abe: Of course I do. I consider myself a moral man who’s lived a moral life, who came to the aid of a woman who suffering a great injustice.
…
Jill: How could you do it, Abe?
Abe: Is the world a better place without this rotten judge?[/b]
In theory, sure. Right, Jill? So: Does she turn him in?
Abe: I’m asking you to put our everyday assumptions aside, Jill, and trust your experience of life. In order to really see the world, we must break with our familiar acceptance of it. The second I decided to take this action, my world changed. You saw it. I suddenly found a reason to live…Doing this deed for this woman gave my own life meaning.
Jill: You gotta leave, Abe. You gotta go. I can’t ever see you again. I won’t say anything. I believe that you think you did something morally worthwhile.
Abe: I did!
Jill: I know, but you can’t…you can’t justify it! You can’t justify it with all this bullshit. With all this French postwar rationalizing. This doesn’t…this is murder. This is murder! It opens the door to more murder. I don’t have the intellect to refute these arguments. I can’t argue with you. But you taught me to think with my instinct and I don’t have to think about it. I feel that this is no good. This is murder…
Back to Kant and The Lie? Then the twist I didn’t see coming…
Jill [after “the wrong man” is arrested for murdering Spnagler]: What are going to do about this?
Abe: I don’t know.
Jill: Oh, surely, you’re not going to let an innocent man take the rap for you, Abe.
Abe: I’ve been up and back about this since I heard the news.
Jill: “Up and back”? What does that mean?
Abe: It means that I tried to bring off the perfect crime, and apparently I succeeded all too well.
Jill: Okay, well, what about all your talk about high moral ground?
Abe: I need to think this out.
Jill: What is there to think about? An innocent man is about to have his life ruined.
Abe: Okay, okay, I’ll give myself up, is that what you want?
Jill: Isn;'t that what you want? I mean, all this talk, talk, talk about doing the right thing and what’s best…
Abe: Okay, if they don’t see that they are making a mistake and let him go I will turn myself in!
So, would you? I’m reasonably sure that I wouldn’t. And neither will he:
Abe [voiceover]: The morality of letting someone take the rap troubled me greatly, but paled against the hardwiring of my natural will to survive…Only one thing stood in the way. I had a few days before Jill would insist I clear the wrongfully accused man. Was there a way to keep her from talking? I guess she was right when she said that one murder opens the door to more…
Next up: the law of unintended consequences. Oh, and the irony of it all.