171: Irrational Man (August, 27)

See? Even the poster is different.

I was a bit surprised at Irrational Man, the most recent film by Woody Allen, with Joaquin Phoenix and Emma Stone (who worked with Allen in his 2014 movie). 

At first, it didn't look like one of Allen's productions. Usually, his characters take his personality traits, but Phoenix is sober as the disturbed and absolutely disillusioned philosophy teacher. Only at the last part on the movie he becomes more similar to Allen. But until then he is dark, serious, blunt about how life makes no sense to him anymore in a very somber manner. He is intense and sad without being fulsome. His friendship with Emma Stone's Jill is compelling, and both actors are very good together. Parker Posey looks like any college teacher that I see walking on the halls in the university that I attend. However, neither character is stereotyped. It is just the opposite: they look like other people around us - and the events here are sort of scary exactly because of that familiarity. And they are not whimsical like Allen's characters usually are. 

Another difference comes from that: we don't laugh hysterically with all the perfect nonsense of daily life. I was mostly intrigued and curious about what would come next. And here's the point in which the story gets closer to a Hitchcock's plot. 

Even the jazz in the soundtrack is of another kind than the usual on Allen's films, setting the narrative in a different pace from the filmmaker other movies. 

I kept waiting for this film to turn into what I expected when I bought my ticket, but it never did, and I was happy with that. It is still a Woody Allen film, and we can notice that in tiny details, in some of the director's trademarks, that don't let us forget who is telling the story here. It was not remarkable to me as one of his previous movies, what didn't prevent me to enjoy this well constructed tale.

Irrational Man. Directed and written by Woody Allen. With: Joaquim
Phoenix, Emma Stone, Parker Posey, Jamie Blackley (from If I Stay).
USA, 2015, 95 min., Dolby Digital, Color (Cinema).