Irrational Man

Set on the fictional, sunlit university campus of Braylin, director Woody Allen’s Irrational Man deals with crisis-struck philosophy professor Abe Lucas (played by Joaquin Phoenix) and his search for meaning.

One of Allen’s classic ‘blocked’ protagonists, Abe becomes a vehicle for exploring themes of randomness, chance and murder – subjects that have haunted the film-maker through Crimes And Misdemeanors, Match Point and Cassandra’s Dream.

Having just published a book, Woody Allen: Film By Film, I now view each movie of his as another chapter in a kind of never-ending, impossible tome, like something from the mind of Escher or Borges. Each film – and they have come regularly, averaging one a year since 1969 – adds another layer to Allen’s oeuvre and if it proves anything, Irrational Man shows that he is still confounding expectations after all these years.

Here, he delivers a jauntylooking and sounding film, yet it is one that beats to murderous impulses, kamikaze behaviour and sex. Although it will probably be filed as one of his more serious pictures, it somehow tiptoes a hair’s breadth from comedy, while it teeters on the knife-edge of tragedy.

There’s something exciting and clammy about Irrational Man, yet there’s also a big dash of ridiculousness. Phoenix’s paunchy Abe is given to self-loathing but, soaked in sweat and red-eyed from alcohol, he is still capable of exciting with his reputation and mercurial thought. Certainly a couple of women on campus are energised by his presence: Rita, a romantically disillusioned faculty wife and scientist (Parker Posey), and the young student Jill, played by Emma Stone, who is drawn to Abe’s sprawling intellect and mature dissolution rather than her earnest, steady boyfriend Roy (Jamie Blackley). Both women foolishly believe they can become Abe’s inspiration and muse.

Overhearing a conversation about a crooked judge in the local town of Newport, Abe elects to take drastic action and commit the perfect murder.

Woody Allen is such an effortless film-maker that his breezy approach to directing can instil his films with a dashed-off quality – his actors often sounding at sea in directionless dialogue that many of today’s scriptwriters and executive committees would tighten up and polish to nothingness.

But therein lie this film’s hidden depths, with its dangerous eddies disguised in summery lightness and the hopefulness of youth, all prettified by Darius Khondji’s seductive widescreen photography.

Phoenix and Stone make an intriguing pair – people, I know, will harp on about the age gap, even if this is one relationship driven entirely by the younger woman – but they are in constant flux, flitting from naivety to sin.

It shouldn’t work, but it really does. Irrational Man isn’t Allen’s best film, but the tide of weekly film releases tends to drown out his unique voice, to the point where there is a general sense that he’s an artist not worth bothering with any more. I’d argue that he’s one of the few artists left, still adding to a remarkable body of work and that each new layer is fascinating. Even taken on its own, Irrational Man is a significant film, one of the more intelligent and probing American films of this year.

Nearing his 80th birthday, Allen doesn’t make films like Manhattan or Annie Hall any more. You wouldn’t expect a man of his age to still be grappling with the comic niceties of dating and break-ups and killing spiders with a tennis racquet. His own search for meaning has deepened. And in this unceasingly prolific late period, he is still exploring the absurdities of modern existence, and nonexistence, with a light touch, still unsure if life is funny or tragic, still trying to figure out who’s in charge of the jokes.

Woody Allen: Film By Film, by Jason Solomons, is published by Carlton Books, priced £19.99.