BEFORE: Emma Stone carries over from "La La Land", and I know what you're probably thinking - What happened to "Blade Runner 2049", that also has Ryan Gosling in it! Well, I need that film to serve as an important link in about a week's time, so I'll post that review then. I wasn't able to put all the Gosling films together if I was also going to get to this one, via the Emma Stone link. And seeing as I watched "Cafe Society" already, which Woody Allen directed after this one, I couldn't just leave one of Woody's films unwatched. His new film doesn't get released until December 1, so for about four weeks, I finally get to say that I've seen every released film directed by him.
It's a little bit weird that this one pops up now, with all the Hollywood scandals breaking over famous people and their patterns of sexual harassment and abuse. Remember a few years back when everyone was freaking out because he married his step-daughter? What happened, did everyone just sort of forget about that? How come he still got to make a few more movies after that, but other people are getting blackballed right now?
THE PLOT: A tormented philosophy professor finds a will to live when he commits an existential act.
AFTER: This film is like a strange peek inside the mind of Woody Allen, and proves that's a really strange place to be. It's mainly a riff on the old thought experiment about whether it would be moral to kill baby Hitler, if you knew that he was going to grow up and commit evil acts. Only baby Hitler's never mentioned, instead this philosophy professor happens to find out about a judge whose rulings have made at least one person's life miserable, and he decides for that reason, the right thing to do would be to kill this judge.
And just as there's essentially only one music riff in this film - Ramsey Lewis' instrumental recording of "The In Crowd", which I guarantee you'll be sick of hearing after watching this film - the movie keeps going over the same argument, again and again, adding little or nothing to the reasoning each time. Even after the deed is done, the professor keeps making the same arguments, as if to convince himself and others that he did the right thing, and made the world a better place.
Only the logic doesn't really work out, and it's not just because this judge's verdict made one woman's life miserable - and this is just based on what the main character overhears in a diner. What if the woman wasn't telling the truth? What if she was exaggerating her plight to gain sympathy from her friends? What if the judge had one bad ruling in a career of mostly good ones, what if he was a great judge who had one really bad day, does he still deserve to die? What if there are circumstances in the woman's life that justified giving custody of her children to her ex-husband, like if she was an alcoholic or an abusive parent?
It's surprising that a philosophy professor who's used to looking at the world from so many different viewpoints (those of the different philosophers he teaches about) could be so locked in to just one way of looking at the world. Once he makes up his mind to make the world better through this act, it seems like nothing will change his mind or deter him from this course of action. I'd be more likely to believe that a philosophy professor would be unable to act, because he'd be too busy considering the impact of his actions from so many angles. Also surprising is the fact that this philosophy professor never once thinks that he's done something wrong - surely he must be aware that society has rules, and if those rules are allowed to be broken, then we risk the breakdown of society.
Meanwhile, there are two different women falling in love with him - clearly Woody Allen's fantasy - and one is his much younger student. Nothing here about how wrong that is, for a student to begin dating her teacher, as if that's the most normal thing in the world. I'm sure it happens, but in the real world this is usually discouraged, and there are repercussions when it does happen. Not in this fantasy world, though.
And it's a big NITPICK POINT when the professor says, "You're not in love with your college professor, you're just in love with the idea of being in love with your college professor..." What's the logical extension of this, if I turn it around on the filmmaker: Woody, you're not really in love with your step-daughter, you're just in love with the idea of being in love with your step-daughter? Or what if someone were to apply this to people who don't approve of inter-racial relationships or same-sex relationships, it's a really dangerous line of thinking.
Worse than all this, however, is the fact that this entire plot is driven by coincidence and contrivance. Overhearing the woman in the diner is coincidence, and then so is everything from how the professor gets the materials to commit the crime, and then how his involvement is eventually discovered. And then everything from the game of Russian roulette at a party to winning a prize at the carnival are just such obvious ways to set up future events - there's an incredible amount of bending the plot backwards just to put the elements in place that will be important later, with zero finesse.
Also starring Joaquin Phoenix (last seen in "Inherent Vice"), Parker Posey (last seen in "Café Society"), Jamie Blackley (last seen in "The Fifth Estate"), Betsey Aidem (last seen in "Mr. Popper's Penguins"), Ethan Phillips (last seen in "Inside Llewyn Davis"), Sophie von Haselberg, Ben Rosenfield, Susan Pourfar, Tom Kemp (last seen in "Manchester By the Sea"), Joe Stapleton (last seen in "Spotlight"), Robert Petkoff, David Aaron Baker (last seen in "The Hoax").
RATING: 4 out of 10 piano lessons
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