Lis­ten Up Philip

In this world, you can’t move for ass­hats. In fact, if you com­mis­sioned a far-reach­ing aca­d­e­m­ic study, you’d like­ly find that the ass­hat to awe­some ratio is 20:1, at the very least. Movies which run with this sup­po­si­tion can find them­selves in the crit­i­cal fir­ing line, as peo­ple (ass­hats and awe­somes) don’t enjoy spend­ing their down time in the com­pa­ny of asshats.

Com­ing across like the expres­sion­is­ti­cal­ly haughty and bil­ious­ly unhinged grand­son of Llewyn Davis, Jason Schwartzman’s Philip Fried­man is a bud­ding nov­el­ist who is so cer­tain of his own indis­putable genius that he grav­i­tates above friends, fam­i­ly and peers. Even though this point­ed­ly exces­sive third fea­ture by the tal­ent­ed writer/​director Alex Ross Per­ry is osten­si­bly a com­e­dy, the notion of hate­ful impe­ri­ous­ness is tak­en with dead-eyed seri­ous­ness, and the film slow­ly and steadi­ly imbues its cen­tral lit­er­ary gar­goyle with a shot of dig­ni­ty and humility.

The film is pow­ered by a voice-over nar­ra­tion deliv­ered in clipped, almost lack­adaisi­cal tones by Eric Bogosian, a tac­tic which places Philip’s vile­ness in an amus­ing­ly every­day con­text. The way the nar­ra­tion is writ­ten also dove­tails with the film’s cod lit­er­ary roots, the sug­ges­tion being that Philip is a con­struct who has been cre­at­ed for rea­sons of fic­tion and not as a paragon of real­ist insight. It’s brac­ing to see such an awful char­ac­ter played with such con­vic­tion and sin­cer­i­ty. Philip is ful­ly aware that what he’s say­ing is wretched and arro­gant, but any kind of shame-sav­ing ver­bal manœu­vre would only tar­nish his superiority.

Some­how even more acrid than Perry’s pre­vi­ous film, The Col­or Wheel, Lis­ten Up Philip sees its ​“hero” attempt to improve his intel­lec­tu­al stand­ing by essen­tial­ly nix­ing con­nec­tions with his pub­lish­ers, shun­ning all press engage­ments and ditch­ing his put-upon girl­friend Ash­ley (Elis­a­beth Moss), so as to take a posi­tion under the wing of laud­ed author, racon­teur and shit, Ike Zim­mer­man (Jonathan Pryce). Although press­ing flesh with a lit­er­ary sage gives Philip the puffy-chest­ed feel­ing of god-like elit­ism, the con­stituent fall­out of his aggres­sive mis­an­thropy hits much hard­er and deep­er than expected.

Tonal touch­stones include Woody Allen’s ear­ly ​’90s bit­ter streak, man­i­fest in films such as Hus­bands and Wives and Decon­struct­ing Har­ry, plus the self-lac­er­at­ing auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal qual­i­ties in the work of author Philip Roth. Although it’s a film about artists and their need to con­struct myths around them­selves to make suc­cess feel more grandiose, it’s also a sim­ple study into the nature of for­give­ness and how cin­e­ma has made us believe that absolv­ing peo­ple of their past sins is always going to result in the best pos­si­ble out­come for all par­ties. Lis­ten Up Philip dares to sug­gest that allow­ing ass­hats to wal­low in their own cra­pu­lence can actu­al­ly be con­sol­ing for every­one who found them­selves on the receiv­ing end. And, in the end, aren’t we all asshats?