Irrational Man (2015 Cannes review)

The cruel randomness of chance and the worrying lack of justice in the world: These have been the dominant, compelling themes in Woody Allen’s movies since 1989’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, which was the first time he wrestled with the existential dread of there being no moral center to the universe. Every few years, in films like Match Point and Cassandra’s Dream, he has returned to these themes with bold directness, but even seemingly lighthearted offerings such as Midnight in Paris and Vicky Cristina Barcelona are, in a sense, about what individuals do with their luck and their free will.
Allen’s latest, Irrational Man (which will hit U.S. theaters July 17), is cut from the same crime-and-punishment cloth as Crimes and Misdemeanors and its follow-up films. Again, Woody takes as fact that we live in a world in which there is no God—and, therefore, no punishment if the guilty get away free. And once again, a murder powers the plot.
Joaquin Phoenix plays Abe, a drunken philosophy professor whose latest teaching gig takes him to a sleepy, rich small town in Rhode Island. Brilliant but tortured, articulate but dismissive of the very notion that philosophy (or anything else) can bring meaning to our worthless lives, Abe seems to be on the fast path to oblivion. (He even engages in an impromptu game of Russian roulette at one point to demonstrate how little he cares about his own existence.)
Naturally, such a brooding, complicated figure attracts his impressionable college student Jill (Emma Stone), who’s a sucker for Abe’s doomed, romantic worldview. Even though she has a steady, dependable boyfriend, Jill wants Abe, especially after she hears through the town gossips that he’s bedded his pupils at previous teaching posts. But Abe wants to end that behavior, and so they become friends and he instead taking to romancing a flirty, unhappy married woman (Parker Posey) who wants some adventure in her life.
Irrational Man sets us up to assume that glum Abe’s existential miseries and bedroom misadventures will be the heart of Allen’s film. But then an intriguing, almost inexplicable wrinkle enters the picture. One day, Abe and Jill overhear a distraught woman telling her friends in a restaurant that she’s going to lose custody of her kids to her no-good ex-husband, all because the judge is buddy-buddy with the ex’s lawyer. This scenario presents a real-world test of Abe’s belief that philosophical musings do little to better the world—only decisive action matters. Quietly, he decides that he’s going to kill this judge. No one would suspect him—this woman doesn’t realize he’s been eavesdropping—and, more importantly, this judge has a history of ethically questionable behavior and is keeping a loving mother from her children. What’s the harm—what’s the moral quandary—in offing him?