Woody Allen's 'Irrational Man'

Take Judah (Martin Landau), for example, the esteemed ophthalmologist in Crimes and Misdemeanors, who commissions the murder of his mistress (Anjelica Huston) in order to preserve his affluence, his family, and his standing in the community. He emerges scot-free; indeed, he prospers, while his guilt becomes a faded memory. Similarly, Chris (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), the upwardly mobile tennis pro in Match Point who joins his father-in-law’s investment firm, murders his mistress (Scarlett Johansson) to safeguard his marriage, and ultimately escapes justice.

But there are other Woody Allen characters who don’t fare as well. The hapless brothers (Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell) in Cassandra’s Dream, contracted to murder their rich uncle’s blackmailer, meet an end right out of Greek tragedy: double fratricide, the fate that Polynices and Eteocles, Oedipus’s sons, also suffered.

Emulating Raskolnikov

And now there’s the protagonist in Allen’s most recent film, Irrational Man. Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix) is a down-and-out professor of philosophy in a small New England college, drowning in depression, alcohol, and self-pity. While crying over his coffee with a female student (Emma Stone) in a local diner, he overhears a conversation in the adjacent booth that changes his fate. It concerns a crooked judge who is depriving an innocent mother of her children because of his personal bias toward the husband’s lawyer.

Abe decides, à la Raskolnikov, to commit the perfect crime: murder the judge and do his small part in making the world a better place. Once he does the deed, he’s transformed, and gets his mojo back, both spiritually and sexually. Through a series of coincidences, however, his crime is discovered by two women with whom he’s sleeping, a colleague’s wife (Parker Posey) and that pesky student who is determined to redeem his bankrupt soul. The latter insists that he turn himself in on moral grounds. So Abe plots to kill the student, with unexpected results.

The familiar Woody Allen theme of alienation in an indifferent universe surfaces yet again in Irrational Man. “People manufacture drama to get through their lives, because they are empty,” says Abe. While the film may not have the heft of the previously mentioned, more substantial works, there’s still enough content in its Dostoevskian themes (guilt, morality, and fate) to make Irrational Man an engrossing addition to the Allen oeuvre.

White-collar criminals

Whether art imitates life or not, it’s fascinating to compare how the parade of white-collar criminals in Allen’s films meet their fate in his comedic as well as his serious films. In Small Time Crooks, Ray, a two-bit operator played by Allen, bungles a bank robbery but becomes a millionaire from his wife’s cookie franchise, only to lose the money all over again and still live happily ever after. The dashing, demonic Tarot-card killer in Scoop (Hugh Jackman), on the other hand, is discovered and disarmed by a rookie reporter/sleuth (Scarlett Johansson).

Meanwhile, way back in Take the Money and Run (1969), Virgil Starkwell, the inept bank robber played by Allen, racks up a sentence of 800 years in prison, but keeps a positive attitude. Says Virgil: “With good behavior, I can get that cut in half.”