Bonjour Cannes (4): The invigorating feeling of death – Tagesspiegel

10:13 clock by Jan Schulz-Ojala

the life has Philosophy Professor Abe Lucas thoroughly fed up: research, teaching, sex – all just distractions from the filled with Scotch Flask. In Woody Allen’s new film “The Irrational Man” reigns of annoyance and even an assassination revives the tired limbs again.

It’s quite possible that Woody Allen has said before. Can – well be that Woody has already said once that he has already said – even more likely. Can anything be. But when his double life motto sometimes just summarize here in Cannes at the filled to the last seat press conference in front of all the people from all the countries in perpetual freshness

Woody Allen: “Life is meaningless, we live in a random universe “

The dark side sounds something like this:” There is no positive response to the grim reality of life. One can be a communist or religious, these systems do not work, but what the heck, if the by misguided man thus feels better? Life is meaningless, we live in a random universe that one day will disappear with the sun and with Beethoven and Shakespeare and all the “

And the lighter”. The only thing I can do as an artist, is to distract myself. This can be in baseball or watching movies when turning. Movies are a wonderful distraction. At such moments, I do not think about death, do not mind that I will be a distant day old and stuff. “

So there sits on the podium of this nearly 80-year-old, a bit hard of hearing, but wide awake message merry man whose 48th film of his fan base has just offered some distraction, and very quickly one is no longer in “The Irrational Man”, but absolutely effortless at last humanity issues. Here, the personality split worldview that neither denies the blackest existentialism would like the interim schnippchentechnische overcome, derived readily from the perspective of his latest, from Joaquin Phoenix only nasty gran telnd, then worrying shrill cheerful verkörpertem heroes.

Russian Roulette as a party gag, a murder of Ennui

Abe Lucas has just been appointed as a professor of philosophy at a small university in Rhode Iceland and fundamentally suicidal. Earlier humanitarian missions to all sorts of world hotspots have disillusioned him, scientific writing is to him as spoiled as the educational work, and also the desire for sex, he has definitely sick for a year. He prefers to keep itself in the morning to his filled with Scotch hip flask, and at student parties, to which he can invite reluctantly, he drops by on that he sometimes just Russian supremacy with a hergereichten revolver roulette on himself. Five marks in a cartridge in the barrel, and nothing! Fortunately, this Abe, I’ll give him

lucky the manifest as healing need Darkened also among women -. The marriage frustrated chemistry professor Rita (Parker Posey) expires him with as well as the a heart to love fellow students (Jamie Blackley) Affiliated Jill (Emma Stone). Where Abe decided platonic proximity to Jill stumbled is shaken. In a conversation at the next table in the diner Abe learns of a judge who threatens a woman in a custody battle to make serious annoyance. Without further ado, he makes the decision to kill the totally alien man, “in order to make the world a better place”. And – hoax! – Already finds the Prof back to life and loving sense

There is a lack of surprise at sparkling self-mocking sarcasm

The killing of a higher morality or just a parent purpose. which seeks to deny the immorality of the act itself, is the guiding principle in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” (more accurately recompiled: “Crime and Punishment”), where Raskolnikov also the motivation and legitimacy to the “permitted murder” is drawn from a listened tavern conversation , Woody Allen has the novel twice, in “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (1989) and “Match Point” (2005), explicitly cited; in both films the perpetrators come otherwise than in the novel, where the murderer is finally, unscathed.

For “Irrational Man” has Woody Allen, also in many action side strand Dostoevsky following, a third resolution devised and it fatal, but the finish amazingly humorous. And especially simple

So pretty the setting, so first lightweight construction -. Soon bothers to “Irrational Man” a certain redundancy of belonging to the character development scenes, and after Abe arg sudden psycho-turning is much almost overwhelming predictable. That it the tormented figure Abe on Allen-typical self-deprecating sarcasm missing sparkling, may still be structurally to accept; less beautiful is the ever more massive recourse to the voice-over and almost uninterrupted jazz and blues sprinkler – just as had all his pictures, his rhythm, his pace this time even not really married.

But who would now speak of an equal age Besides work, where the master but – in Cannes and at all – so naughty fun of the age? Could be that “Irrational Man” is not one of his best films. Something worse than the next Woody Allen but we found everywhere.