The difficulty in watching Woody Allen’s new work by Irrational Man (2015) is that I’m really not familiar with the philosophical quotes in it, just like watching "Midnight in Paris" (Midnight in Paris-2011). ) There is no literary celebrity allusion that can make me resonate with understanding. Facing such a director who likes to drop his bookbags, audiences who don't read can only look horrible.
The story is about an unreasonable love affair between a middle-aged philosophy professor and a student. The two have their own counterparts, which is the dialectic of love and life that Woody Allen often deals with; the female student is dissatisfied with the stable relationship with her boyfriend, but instead Attracted by professors who are full of nihilism and self-destructive tendencies, the professor refuses the other party's further pursuits as the female student is only in love with the teacher-student relationship, but accepts the seduce of the married chemistry teacher of the same school, but love does not bring him Too much passion for life, because he is falling into a middle-aged melancholy that can't find the meaning of life. He lived for most of his life only in exchange for a broken marriage and a deep sense of powerlessness for the whole world. Even the professor in the film was under impulse. Pick up the revolver and play the suicide game of Russian Roulette.
In the middle of the movie, the professor found that he was capable of killing a judge who had nothing to do with him but did a lot of evil. After this murder, the world will become better, even if only a little bit, and this will become the most important thing for him. Significant significance. I didn't understand why the professor who was not afraid of death thought that he found the meaning of life, and it was a murder that could not be justified by common sense. The role of this character using philosophy as the criterion of thinking may provide reasonable motivation (does knowledge point to truth or confusion?). What’s more interesting is that this must be a “perfect” murder, without traces and doubts, Professor As a murderer with no reasonable motives, he is putting him in the best position. Under his careful planning, this murder will look like a natural chance that is difficult to solve, just like Russian roulette.
The script here mixes and flips love and murder across genres. After the professor crossed the "dangerous" line, he found the long-lost enthusiasm for life and accepted the pursuit of female students, but the female students deviated from the original dullness. After her life track, she gradually discovered the truth of the murder step by step. Is such a danger really what she wants? On the contrary, the professor persuades himself to kill with his own moral thinking, but when innocent people will be wronged and his crimes may be exposed, he succumbs to the desire of life and gives up the original idea of making the world better. The illusion of love and the self-pity of life became a mockery of nothingness in the hands of Woody Allen.
The accident constructed by the professor's wishful thinking through a perfectly planned crime also gradually revealed its feet under another series of accidents. The so-called perfect structure and the trick of luck have drawn a different propositional opposition, which naturally reminds me of " The ball that hits the net in "Match Point-2005" (Match Point-2005). In the old work, the inspiration of the detective flying out of the sky discovered the structure of crime, but then he thought it was accidental and lightly let it go. In the new work It was because of all kinds of accidents that the female students discovered the clues in the series, and then revealed the inevitable truth. Humans design the course of destiny step by step through thinking and logic, but the real destiny is manipulated by random chance. This is Woody Allen's dialectic of meaning and nothingness.
The whole film is carried out in the rhythm of Woody Allen's nagging. A lot of dialogue may be natural for the characters as professors and students of philosophy. The narration of the two protagonists' flashbacks seems to be written by the director. Convenient methods, but under the tragedy of the expected ending, once confused me with the final fate of the character (because I thought the narration belonged to the surviving talent). The plot changes before and after the film, but the style remains the same, especially the relaxing and humorous jazz soundtrack, which turns the joke that was originally teased by love into the director’s sneer at the confusion and struggle of the character. Woody Allen wrote in many previous works. Crime and moral dialectical tragedy works (including "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989) which I have not seen, the plot seems to be a variation of the same theme), the same proposition is in this film and his love satire Under the post, there is another layer of fun for fans who are familiar with the director. Love and murder, the pursuit of morality and meaning may have been futile for Woody Allen.
But this is a story that happened in a movie after all. The author can naturally arrange all kinds of opportunities to resolve the seemingly unexpected fate. In the tragedy full of comedy, the audience can finally walk out of the theater with peace of mind and continue to face life. The unknown in the future.
(2015/12/13 published in personal blog)
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