Irrational Man

IRRATIONAL MAN            B                
USA  (96 m)  2015  ‘Scope  d:  Woody Allen

Woody takes a stab at existential philosophy, love, death, the feeble actions of man, and even Divine providence in attempting to live with and comprehend the anxieties of the modern world.  While in many ways it veers towards similar themes of Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, it does so in the absence of God, where moral guidelines are so much more subjective, different for each person, where each generation is seen as blindly trying to find their own way in a vacuous world filled with tragedies and pitfalls standing in the way.  Interestingly, the title of the film is also a 1958 book by William Barrett that does a good job tracing the roots of existentialism throughout history, highlighting a few central figures, and anointing it as the philosophy of our times.  While not exactly a novelization of the book, which is not even credited, much of the subject matter is discussed in a return to the college classroom, where Joaquin Phoenix plays a well-traveled philosophy professor named Abe Lucas whose reputation precedes him as he arrives for the summer session at fictional Braylin College (actually Salve Regina University in Newport), a small town in Rhode Island that braces for his arrival.  While he’s something of a brooding loner with an obvious drinking problem, the faculty find him something of an erratic disgrace while the students love how off-the-rails he seems to be.  While rumors fly about his whirlwind affairs, he’s actually built a fairly solid reputation from his writings.  But in terms of his overt pretentiousness, we’ve seen the man before in the works of James Toback’s THE GAMBLER (1974) starring James Caan and Robert Wyatt’s recent remake The Gambler (2014), starring Mark Wahlberg as the central figure of a man drowning in debt, who seemingly can’t help himself, loosely based upon a modern update of Dostoyevsky’s 1867 novella.  Wahlberg is a college literature professor that allows himself to engage in an affair with the best and brightest of his students, so it should come as no surprise when Phoenix does the same, singling out Emma Stone as Jill Pollard, who distinguishes herself with her well-reasoned writings.  Somehow drawn to his depressive state, she is nonetheless inspired by his dilapidated state and outsiderist thinking, which is so not like the more conventional thinking of her bland but more levelheaded boyfriend Roy (Jamie Blackley).  While pledging her love to Roy, she runs around on long walks and late night evenings with the professor, literally smitten by the worldly experience he brings into her life, which we hear in separate voiceover narrations from both of them, where she’s literally caught in his energy stream, thinking and talking about him all the time, where in the eyes of others they have become the “campus couple.”    

Abe, however, is stuck in a rut of disillusionment, alcoholism and self-pity, but that doesn’t stop the flirtations of a married chemistry professor Rita (Parker Posey), who was just waiting for his arrival as if he was the answer to her prayers, quickly snuggling up to him, arriving with his favorite drink in a rainstorm, not even deterred when she discovers he’s impotent.  Always wondered why Parker Posey didn’t work more often with Woody Allen, as her impeccable timing and comic wit, along with her sensational improvisational skills would seem like a perfect match, not to mention her modest ego and ability to be a team player, where she’s never been a diva personality, yet throughout her career she’s always delivered on camera.  Apparently it’s taken until she reached her late 40’s before they clicked, as she’s also scheduled to be in his next film as well.  Posey provides the needed charisma, while Phoenix continually dwells on his personal torment and anguish, yet he’s got two women infatuated with him.  Only in Woody world.  Yet that is part of the fun of the movie, as it’s well beyond the acceptance level of anything the audience would ever experience, yet it’s curiously close to the mindset of the director himself, who seems drawn to the subject of professionally inappropriate, which has followed him throughout his career.  Abe’s mindset mirrors that of the Allen characters he’s always played, mired in an apparently longstanding existential crisis, drawing on the feelings and sympathies of others, which they’re all too willing to give, seemingly having little to offer himself, where he feels suffocated by the claustrophobic feelings that are forever choking him.  While the film feels like another breezy and lightweight romantic comedy, where even the names of Kant, Kierkegaard, and Sartre were discussed by Allen’s own character Alvy Singer in ANNIE HALL (1977) nearly forty years ago, the film’s attraction appears to be the pursuit of happiness from the young developing life of Jill Pollard, who’s also, by the way, mastered the classical piano.  Then comes a moment that’s like turning on a light switch, where everything changes.  Suddenly it’s all about Abe’s transformation into a man of action and self-fulfillment, highlighted by a conversation Abe and Jill overhear in a diner where a distraught woman was on the verge of losing her children by a callous judge in a custody case.  Gone are the days of swilling Scotch into the wee hours of the night, making a wreck of his life, as suddenly this perfect stranger that he’s never spoken to has given him a reason for living, becoming obsessed with the idea of eliminating this judge with the perfect murder.

Abe is instantly motivated and happy, and while he avoided sexual contact with Jill before, suddenly he’s been invigorated, becoming a ravenous tiger in bed.  Sporting a smile instead of that dreary look of constant regret, Abe is a new man, dispensing with all the old philosophical baggage that sounded like a lot of crap to him anyway, as he’s discovered a new reason for living.  While this may conjure up thoughts of MATCH POINT (2005) and certainly Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Abe has got his mind clear of guilt, believing he’s doing society, and this woman, a favor by getting rid of this judge and making the world a better place.  While it all sounds like vigilantism gone amok, it certainly changes the focus of the film, where gone is the breezy comedy and suddenly we’ve entered dangerous territory, with the audience completely identifying with criminality, especially coming from Woody Allen, who has tread these dirty waters before in his own messy personal life.  There’s a kind of childlike naiveté with the way Allen approaches the subject, like a child’s delight at opening a new present.  Suddenly the focus is on murder, and the fascination with pulling off the perfect crime, entering the area of expertise of Hitchcock, like his real-time chamber drama ROPE (1948), or one of his favorite writers, Patricia Highsmith, adapting her novel Strangers On a Train into a 1951 film, while Wim Wenders adapted another Highsmith novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley, into The American Friend (Der amerikanische Freund) (1977).  Each of these films deals with the idea of pulling off the perfect murder.  The narrative momentum completely shifts to Abe’s new obsession, spelled out in psychological detail through voiceover as the “idea” literally takes over the film, where Abe’s character has a noticeably sunnier disposition, getting this all off his chest, where we’re led to believe he might actually get away with it.  And what sympathy is there for the judge anyway?  Abe is coming out of his shell and all is sunny and light, until Jill gets word of rumors that could possibly link Abe to the crime.  While he never thoroughly considered her response, as they shared an initial macabre elation at the judge’s demise, all the while thinking she loved and adored him, she’s actually pretty queasy with the revelation that he might somehow be connected to the crime and seems willing to expose it all, demanding that he confess and take responsibility.  This is the real world, after all.  Or is it?  Just what game are we playing here?  Jill’s interference makes the entire situation darker and more complicated, as she’s not the blindly devoted follower he’d hoped for, as she has a mind of her own, and she wants no part of this filthy matter.  This is a like a psychological schism happening exactly where he thought he’d committed the perfect crime, as he was in no way linked to this woman, so what possible motive could he have?  Abe’s happiness turns to grief and despair, and we’re back on murky grounds again with his future slipping away, where he has to act to set things straight.  It’s a bit baffling, where there’s obvious humor in the dark depravity of his thinking, the ramifications of which are obscured by the absurdity of what we continually witness onscreen.  The world is eventually made right again, as if through blind chance or Divine providence, interfering in ways we, the living, could never suspect.  Not sure why all the horrible reviews, as some stoop as low as thinking this is one of the worst Allen films, but it’s hardly that, as it’s meant to be amusingly disturbing, like a scary ride at a carnival.  But when it comes so close to the author’s own twisted internal psyche, that glimpse takes viewers on one hell of a ride, accompanied throughout by a live version of Ramsey Lewis’s “The ‘In’ Crowd,” The "In" Crowd ~ Ramsey Lewis Trio - YouTube (5:51).

A Pigeon Sat On a Branch Reflecting On Existence (En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron)

A PIGEON SAT ON A BRANCH REFLECTING ON EXISTENCE  (En duva satt på en gren och funderade på tillvaron)                       B+                   

Sweden  Germany  Norway  France  (101 mi)  2014  d:  Roy Andersson

The final installment of Roy Andersson’s “trilogy about being a human being,” coming after SONGS FROM THE SECOND FLOOR (2000) and YOU, THE LIVING (2007), turning this into a nearly two decade long experimental view of human existence, as seen with a modernist sensibility accentuating the absurdity of human behavior.  Perhaps only ERASERHEAD (1977) displays this level of surrealistic artistic sensibility, where what’s showing up onscreen could only come out of the heads of such completely original artists, where no one else displays their level of assuredness.  While SONGS created the most explosive impact, literally something we had never seen before, each successive venture has been singularly unique artistically, but less effective overall, as we are treading on familiar territory.  Not sure Andersson had a trilogy in mind when he began this project, but his initial success came from making such successful, award-winning commercials, directing over 400 of them, which is how he’s financed his features, though in 1975, he took a 25-year break from directing feature films.  When SONGS was released, the film world sat up and noticed, as it seemed to come out of nowhere, like a long absent comet that suddenly blazes across the sky.  With meticulously designed sets, Andersson took seven years to complete his next film to his exact specifications, and another seven more to finalize the trilogy, where Andersson’s style, according to a 2009 MOMA exhibit of his work, MoMA | Filmmaker in Focus: Roy Andersson, is “stationary shots characterized by brilliantly conceived tableaux, yet an essential humanity and focus on the daily lives of working-class people.”  Without ever utilizing lead characters, his primary focus is establishing a precise look with washed out color, creating a ghoulish and often unworldly mood, using deadpan humor, exaggerated, heavily stylized acting that lampoons Swedish culture, which includes a fondness for fat people, the elderly, and people so skeletal that there is barely any flesh on their bones, their faces painted chalky white to resemble walking corpses.  Filmed in long shots where the camera never moves, Andersson’s sketches are like paintings that come to life, offering bleak social criticism through a heightened tone of overly morose absurdity and a lacerating surrealism.  Much like ERASERHEAD’s signature song from the radiator, “In heaven, everything is fine,” the standard mantra heard throughout the final chapter are recurring cellphone phone conversations, “I’m happy to hear you’re doing fine.”  Judging from what we see onscreen, however, the world is a turbulent place with a prevalence of misery and death always hovering nearby.  Much like the short stories of Chekhov, conventional action has been replaced by a theater of mood and atmosphere, where instrinsic to the satirical tone established in each sequence is a fully realized, more profound underlying drama of realism. 

The first Andersson feature to be filmed in digital, much of what transpires takes place in Gothenburg, opening with a series of cleverly ironic death scenes that display exaggerated morbid humor, where a man on a cruise ship remains dead on the floor immediately after ordering a sandwich and a beer, with ship officials hovering over him, and while his inert body remains the focus of the frame, the waitress is forced to ask the surrounding diners if any would care for a free meal.  One elderly customer expresses an interest in the beer, nearly stepping over the body to retrieve it.  Accentuating the ridiculousness of the human condition, we are introduced to a hapless pair of traveling salesmen, Jonathan (Holger Andersson) and Sam (Nils Westblom), two dour and humorless men who have come to collect their share of the earnings from the sale of their products in a small shop, discussing the inventory of specific novelty items, like rubber masks or plastic vampire teeth, with the saleswoman behind the counter.  But when they ask for money, she steps behind the door to ask her unseen husband what to do, telling them to come back in a few days, a tactic they refuse, as they’ve sent them repeated notices and it’s now time to pay up.  When it becomes evident they mean business, the door finally opens a sliver and we catch a glimpse of the man in the back still dressed in his robe, lying on the sofa, as if watching TV, where we hear his screaming cries yelling at the top of his lungs, “We have no money!” as the men are seen repossessing what few items remain in the shop.  It’s hard to decide where to place one’s sympathies, as each side is equally pathetic, but it does illustrate how close to the edge many people exist.  Andersson borrows the music from the end of Buñuel’s VIRIDIANA (1961), a barebones Rockabilly rock ‘n’ roll song called “Shimmy Doll,” Ashley Beaumont - Shimmy Doll - YouTube (2:00), where customers in a contemporary bar are playing it on the jukebox, when two soldiers dressed in 17th century army uniforms open the bar doors and stand guard, announcing the arrival of Swedish King Charles XII (Viktor Gyllenberg), a particularly militaristic figure known for his bloodthirsty aggression who reigned from 1697 to 1718, entering on his horse, ordering all the women out of the bar, attacking them with whips, having his men assault another man who he identifies as “a sneaky Russian,” chasing him down the street, whipping him all the way, expressing the pent-up furor and rage of men marching off to war to invade Russia.  Later on we see the remains of a ragtag group of walking wounded, tattered and beaten, retreating from battle, where the exact same circumstance plays out with the men standing guard at the door before the announcement of the King, whose horse is pulled into the bar with the King lying over the saddle.  His men pull him off into a chair, as it’s announced he needs to use the toilet.  One of his men checks the security of the facilities, only to return with the humiliating announcement that the King will have to wait, as the toilet is currently occupied.  Somehow all the previous fire and brimstone is gone, as instead the King must languish in his own private torment.

The title was inspired by the 16th century painting The Hunters in the Snow by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, a rural wintertime scene where the birds perched in the branches of the tree in the foreground have a panoramic view overlooking all, where Andersson imagines what they might be thinking about the actions and strange mannerisms of humans.  Winner of the Golden Lion for Best Film at Venice, where the competition included Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Black Souls (Anime Nere), and Manglehorn, where it’s easy to see how Andersson’s cryptic vision could stand out.  Two scenes are perhaps most significant, one is a euphoric musical centerpiece sequence in a beer hall known as Limping Lotta’s in Gothenburg, where the bar hostess yells in the ear of an elderly customer asking if he’d like another drink, which of course he does, once awakened to the reality, where she announces he’s been drinking every night in the same establishment for 60 years.  “That’s a lot of shots,” someone suggests.  The scene suddenly shifts to the same man sitting in the same bar in 1943, where Lotta and her entire customer base break out into song, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence clip - Limping Lotta YouTube (2:58), creating a delightful piece of living musical theater that continually builds in intensity, becoming a ravishing Brechtian spectacle of proper beer hall decorum, where everyone can get a shot of liquor in exchange for a kiss.  This is as intensely exciting as the film becomes, drawing the audience into the social implications of a small moment in history.  The other has darker and much more tragic implications, which is immediately evident to viewers, as the sweeping historical context stands out in a film that otherwise contains small comically absurd vignettes, so there’s a growing awareness as this sequence proceeds.  Black slaves tied together by ropes and chains are herded by Colonial-era British soldiers into a giant cylinder drum made by Boliden (a Swedish mining company sued and determined responsible for toxic poisoning in Chile in the 1980’s from tons of melted copper residue left behind on waste dumps where children routinely played) with what appears to be musical airholes.  Once locked in, the cylinder turns over a burning fire, like a rotisserie, as the slaves are literally roasted alive, yet break out into song, where screams are mysteriously transformed into a kind of mournful music, where an upper class establishment nearby of elderly rich dressed in formal evening wear opens the doors leading to a terrace view to observe the evening’s sinister entertainment as a hostess fills their glasses with champagne.  It’s a diabolical metaphor for the horrors inflicted by European colonialism where the viewers literally can’t believe their eyes.  Overall, each of the 39 filmed vignettes is elegantly defined by the easily understood simplicity on display, where there is little to no action, but the power of suggestion from each sequence builds up over time, creating a kind of skewed and imbalanced universe where humans are known to roam.  While dramatically inert, much of this is compacted into cleverly designed tiny packages that are visually inspired and simply unforgettable.