Chad Taylor

School's been blown to pieces


What a great movie. Woody Allen's Irrational Man is small like a Russian short story. Instead of Chekhov's gun it has a pocket torch (although there is a gun, too); in place of the writer-director's often cringemaking sexual reveries the relationships are adult and on-point (although again a scene in which a writer working at home is interrupted by Parker Posey bearing a bottle of whisky is as agreeable a fantasy as one could conjur). Like the mis-en-scene of London finance in Match Point the hermetic world of a New England campus focuses the characters' dilemma. Joaquin Phoenix (paunchy, cold) plays a philosophy professor paralysed between theory and action, Posey (brittle, confident) a scientist with chemistry, and Emma Stone (wide-eyed, smart) a student who learns something. The script lacks the wizardry and magic that spoils every other Woody Allen. There are jokes but the actors ride over them, tamping down the smart-ass observations until they read as self-deprecating mumbling. Phoenix literally kills the humour and the movie soars by staying in the box. It's a solid little masterpiece that locks down its story with broad themes, sly editing and the eloquent style of voiceovers that made Vicky Cristina Barcelona such a good picture to look at.