Everyone needs a project in Irrational Man

    1 of 2 2 of 2

      Starring Joaquin Phoenix. Rated PG.

      In years past, William Barrett’s Irrational Man was the handy paperback to carry around with your French cigarettes. The 1958 book was a concise overview of trends in the existential thinking of the postwar period, and Woody Allen’s latest makes superficial, if entertaining, use of that material.

      Joaquin Phoenix impresses as a no-longer-young philosophy professor called Abe Lucas, starting over at an Ivy League college in Rhode Island, which plays itself. Abe is preceded by his reputation and a notable booze belly (also playing itself), and instantly attracts women drawn to hopeless cases.

      First up is age-appropriate Rita, an unhappily married colleague (Parker Posey, almost stealing the movie). But Abe can’t quite resist the attentions of younger Jill (Emma Stone), a brilliant student and budding concert pianist who makes him her project, despite the objections of a bland boyfriend (If I Stay’s Jamie Blackley) who sees her slipping away.

      Abe’s a hard-drinking depressive who favours self-pitying generalities. But he finds a new raison d’être when he overhears a woman complaining about a crooked judge in her custody battle. Suddenly, he’s obsessed with the idea of secretly removing that anonymous authority figure, although it never occurs to him to question the veracity of the stranger’s story. Because everyone needs a project.

      Like Abe, the movie traffics in book-jacket terms, never going far beyond easy references to Kierkegaard and Sartre. And the story’s debt to Dostoyevsky is made too clear, with references to Crime and Punishment literally underlined on-screen, in case we missed it.

      Still, Phoenix is a convincing rascal, and Stone is potent as a smarty-pants who can’t identify her own compulsions. They take turns narrating events, and the writing is often sharp. But undergrads won’t be quoting it in years to come.

      Comments