IRRATIONAL MAN: FILOSOFIA E TRIANGOLO AMOROSO SONO I REGISTRI QUI ALLACCIATI DA WOODY ALLEN, CON JOAQUIN PHOENIX IN SELLA A SERI DUBBI ESISTENZIALI. AD ASSISTERLO NELLA CAVALCATA EMMA STONE E PARKER POSEY
Seconde visioni - Cinema sotto le stelle: 'The Best of Summer 2016' - Dal 68° Festival del Cinema di Cannes (13-24 maggio 2015) - (Uscito al cinema il 16 DICEMBRE) - RECENSIONE ITALIANA e PREVIEW in ENGLISH by SCOTT FOUNDAS, (www.variety.com)
"GiĂ da quando ero molto giovane e per chissĂ quale motivo, sono sempre stato attratto da ciĂČ che la gente chiama âle grandi domandeâ. Nel mio lavoro sono diventate soggetto sul quale scherzare nel caso di commedie, oppure motivo di confronto nel caso di film drammatici... A quel tempo non avevo ancora letto Nietzsche o Kierkegaard, filosofi molto amati da Bergman, ma quei film mi hanno fatto scattare la molla. Ero affascinato dai suoi film e dalle questioni contenute in essi e dai problemi che affrontavano. E piĂč tardi nel corso degli anni, ho letto un bel poâ di libri di filosofia e sono riuscito a capire con maggiore chiarezza da chi era stato influenzato e quale idee aveva messo in scena. Sono cresciuto divertendomi a leggere filosofi, comparandoli e capendo come si sfidassero e smentissero lâun lâaltro nei loro approcci contrastanti verso domande senza risposta"
Il regista e sceneggiatore Woody Allen
(Irrational Man; USA 2015; Mistero; 96'; Produz.: Gravier Productions; Distribuz.: Warner Bros. Pictures Italia)
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix (Abe Lucas) Emma Stone (Jill Pollard) Parker Posey (Rita Richards) Jamie Blackley (Roy) Betsy Aidem (La madre di Jill) Ethan Phillips (Il padre di Jill) Meredith Hagner (Sandy) Ben Rosenfield (Danny) Julie Ann Dawson (Studentessa) David Aaron Baker (Biff) David Pittu (Professore) Susan Pourfar (Carol) Joe Stapleton (Professore) Tom Kemp (Giudice Spangler)
Costumi: Suzy Benzinger
Fotografia: Darius Khondji
Montaggio: Alisa Lepselter
Effetti Speciali: Adam Bellao (effetti speciali); Alex Miller (supervisore effetti visivi)
Makeup: Judy Chin (capo dipartimento makeup)
Casting: Patricia Kerrigan DiCerto e Juliet Taylor
Scheda film aggiornata al:
23 Agosto 2016
Sinossi:
IN BREVE:
Di scena Abe Lucas (Joaquin Phoenix), professore di filosofia, incapace di dare significato alla sua vita. Arrivato come nuovo insegnante al college di una piccola cittĂ incontra due donne: Rita, professoressa solitaria, e Jill, la sua migliore allieva. Il caso spariglia le carte quando Abe e Jill si trovano ad origliare la conversazione di un estraneo, rimanendone invischiati. Nel momento stesso in cui Abe decide di compiere una scelta delicata, torna nuovamente ad abbracciare la vita. Ma la sua decisione innesca una catena di eventi che influenzeranno la sua stessa vita e quelle di Jill e Rita per sempre.
SYNOPSIS:
Philosophy professor Abe Lucas is at rock bottom emotionally, unable to find any meaning or joy in life.
Soon after arriving to teach at a small town college, Abe gets involved with two women: Rita Richards, a lonely professor who wants him to rescue her from her unhappy marriage; and Jill Pollard, his best student, who becomes his closest friend.
Pure chance changes everything when Abe and Jill overhear a strangerâs conversation and become drawn in.
Once Abe makes a profound choice, he is able to embrace life to the fullest again. But his decision sets off a chain of events that will affect him, Jill and Rita forever
Commento critico (a cura di ENRICA MANES)
Il gusto dolceamaro del vero colpisce ancora, come sempre accade nel cinema di Woody Allen che anche questa volta non smentisce la sua vena ironica e la sagacia che da sempre lo contraddistinguono nel tracciare i profili della societĂ contemporanea e di ogni tempo.
Condito da una colonna sonora dallo swing frizzante, che spesso appare nei film di Allen, stride con il noir del precipizio morale, strizzando l'occhio con ironia e dando il ritmo alle azioni.
Fin dal titolo troviamo impressa piĂč che mai la cifra conoscitiva del gioco di parole e di quel destino che segna gli uomini catturati dalla lente di ingrandimento di Allen: il conflitto eterno tra razionale e irrazionale portato alla luce attraverso la quotidianitĂ del teatro esistenziale. Una domanda in agguato che si insinua nella mente dello spettatore e tiene avvinti sino alla fine ad una trama semplice soltanto in apparenza e solo in apparenza costellata dal
Lui, lei, l'altra e una storia tenebrosa e triste alle spalle, un fidanzato e l'atmosfera del college. Tutti ingredienti che la regia sapiente orchestra in maniera come sempre agile e spiccata, puntando il dito sui tipi sociali e sul vissuto piĂč quotidiano. Le psicosi e le necessitĂ umane sono svelate tutte e imbastite insieme nella commedia che Ăš la vita stessa; i personaggi avvinti da un destino ineluttabile di salvezza o di ordinaria follia.
Come giĂ in Blue Jasmine e in Sogni e delitti, i protagonisti di Irrational Man hanno molte potenzialitĂ e, come da copione, si trovano a metterle a frutto oppure a perdere per sempre se stessi. La desolazione dell'uomo contemporaneo viene messa sotto i riflettori e il passo tra ottenere talento e cadere in basso, come derelitti, Ăš fatale.
Questa volta l'approccio filosofico Ăš ancora piĂč marcato e lo stesso Allen gioca e si diverte con una
Secondo commento critico (a cura di SCOTT FOUNDAS, www.variety.com)
WOODY ALLEN CONTEMPLATES THE PERFECT MURDER (AGAIN) IN A DARKLY FUNNY, INTELLECTUALLY RIGOROUS CAMPUS COMEDY.
After Alfred Hitchcock and his Gallic disciple, Claude Chabrol, has any filmmaker devoted more screen time to contemplating the mechanics of the âperfectâ murder than Woody Allen? Allenâs latest, âIrrational Man,â adds to a tally that also includes âCrimes and Misdemeanors,â âMatch Pointâ and the little-seen âCassandraâs Dreamâ â only, unlike those filmsâ homicidal protagonists, the philosophical anti-hero of Allenâs 45th feature kills not for love or money, but rather for a kind of existential clarity. That conceit puts a fresh spin on a familiar premise and marks âIrrational Manâ as one of the Woodmanâs more offbeat and ambitiously weird projects since the fragmented âDeconstructing Harryâ in 1997, though less conventionally entertaining than recent home runs like âBlue Jasmineâ and âMidnight in Paris.â Arthouse traffic should be decent but modest for the
July 24 Sony Classics release.
In a role that suits his laconic, rum-soaked rhythms nearly as well as did the stoner detective from last yearâs âInherent Vice,â Joaquin Phoenix stars as Abe Lucas, a philosophy professor whose appointment to a small Rhode Island college sends tremors through the campus before heâs even set foot on it. Heâs an alcoholic who likes to have affairs with his students, says one rumor; his wife recently left him for his best friend says another; he witnessed another friend get blown up by a land mine in Iraq, or maybe it was Afghanistan. Whatever the case, Abe Lucas seems to be the biggest thing to hit fictional Braylin College (actually Newportâs Salve Regina University) in at least a decade, and Allen paints these opening scenes in such broadly comic strokes that you half expect the entire campus to erupt in a musical number upon Abeâs
arrival.
It doesnât, but Abe certainly lives up to his own advance hype, shuffling about in a mildly hungover haze, advising his students that âmuch of philosophy is verbal masturbation,â and showing off his nihilistic inclinations by playing Russian roulette in front of horrified onlookers at an off-campus party. âEmotionally, I had arrived at Zabriskie Point,â Abe tells us in one of the filmâs dueling voiceovers. But that only seems to add to his sad-sack allure where Braylinâs female faculty and student body are concerned. They include Jill Pollard (Emma Stone), a bright and bright-eyed student in Abeâs summer âethical strategiesâ class (and the movieâs other narrator); and Rita Richards (a delightfully daft Parker Posey), an unhappily married professor who throws herself at Abe with all the subtlety of Mae West courting Cary Grant.
Initially, Abe keeps his distance from both women, partly out of a sense of propriety, but also because
his depressive funk has rendered him temporarily impotent. But Abe and Jill nevertheless start spending extracurricular time together, in which the sunny undergrad tries to cast some light into the professorâs gloom. Once upon a time, we learn, Abe was a firebrand activist and relief worker with stints in Darfur and post-Katrina New Orleans to his credit, but somewhere along the way he stopped believing he could change the world and resolved to be one of lifeâs passive observers. All that changes, though, when Abe and Jill overhear a hushed conversation in a local diner, in which a desperate woman recounts the details of a bitter custody battle, including the ex-husband trying to take her children from her, and the corrupt judge whoâs solidly in his corner. Abe begins to imagine that, if only someone were to murder said judge, it might make the world a more right and just
place. And then he fancies that this hypothetical someone might be him.
Allen asks the audience to take a considerable logical leap there â some will, some wonât â but logic is one of the last things âIrrational Manâ has on its mind. (The movie shares its title with a 1958 volume by philosopher and literary critic William Christopher Barrett, which sought to explain existentialism in lay terms to English-language readers.) For Allen â who once joked that he only read Kierkegaard and Freud so he could get girls â this ranks among his most unabashedly intellectual exercises, with references to Dostoevsky, Heidegger, Kant, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir that arenât just clever name-dropping, but part of a bigger discussion âIrrational Manâ wants to have about the efforts of writers and thinkers to explain the world, and the vast chasm between theory and practice.
Murder â even the mere thought of it
â âunblocksâ Abe, both creatively and sexually, and Allen leaves it up to us to tally the moral scorecard (an attitude that will lead some less imaginative observers to position the film as yet another thinly veiled Allen confessional). But an unblocked Abe is still subject to the randomness of fate â another pet Allen theme â which comes home to roost in a climax thatâs a veritable illustration of the filmmakerâs own oft-stated philosophy of life: âYouââre always searching for control, and in the end youâre at the mercy of the hoisted piano not falling on your head.ââ
Those ideas sometimes sit a tad uneasily on the surface of âIrrational Man,â which, in its more bluntly scripted moments, has its characters spout aphorisms that sound more like undergraduate thesis topics than natural dialogue â an ideological tennis game to complement âMatch Pointâsâ actual one. But Allenâs visual direction and editing
rhythms are particularly sharp and precise this time around, as is his work with the actors. In her second teaming with the director (after last yearâs âMagic in the Moonlightâ), Stone effortlessly captures the curiosity of young people with their whole lives ahead of them and none of the cynicism earned with age and disappointment. Phoenix, meanwhile, pulls off the trickier task of making us sympathize (at least fleetingly) with a sociopath, all the while avoiding the actorly deathtrap of âdoingâ Woody.
Shooting for only the fifth time in CinemaScope (after âManhattan,â âAnything Else,â âBlue Jasmineâ and âMagic in the Moonlightâ), Allen and cinematographer Darius Khondji make Newport look every so lovely, dappled in sunlight and swathed in pastels. In contrast to the usual bevy of jazz standards on the soundtrack, Allen here turns a single repeated track, the Ramsey Lewis Trioâs instrumental version of âThe In Crowd,â into a kind
of musical noose that gradually tightens around the charactersâ necks.
Bibliografia:
Nota: Si ringraziano Warner Bros. Pictures Italia e lo Studio Lucherini Pignatelli.