Listen Up Philip gives us one of cinema’s most magnificent A-holes, up there with Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets or Larry David on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” He’s not quite Dr. Gregory House – because House is on another level – but Philip (Jason Schwartzman) is memorable.
It’s clear from the opening of the film that Philip is an A-hole. He endears himself to us by telling off an ex-girlfriend, which is vicariously satisfying to anyone, but very quickly we understand that he’s always like this. Philip is an author who must have had enough success to become pretentious because he considers everyone beneath him, even his publishers trying to promote his next book.
It’s basically a character study where we see Philip in various relationships, romantic, professional and basic social interactions. Good thing he’s such a compelling A-hole to make it interesting. Some of the justifications he has for his own behavior are so shocking they’re funny, especially when it comes to his students after he takes a teaching job.
We meet an even bigger A-hole than Philip when his mentor, author Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce), invites him to stay at his summer house to get away from it all. Only Ike is not a funny A-hole. He’s so far gone it’s sad and pathetic, which is clearly where Philip is headed.
The tone of Listen Up Philip is slightly surreal. It uses an objective narrator (a third party from any of the characters) and shifts point of view a few times, but never to the Woody Allen degree of breaking the fourth wall. Really, if you just watched Listen Up Philip with no cinema background, you’d just get the straight story of the characters, but I suspect that artistic distance is what makes the character Philip palatable, even engrossing for nearly two hours.
The film’s down and dirty style reveals itself, sometimes obtrusively, as handheld cameras shake considerably when zoomed in on close-ups. The camera also finds itself framing dead space many times when it can’t keep up with the actors. There are several solutions to this, including using a wider lens, setting the camera on a dolly or tripod, or, you know, actually planning your shots ahead of time. If the dead space and jerky frames were intentional, as they may very well have been, then it’s merely an artificial trick to show off how “real” the film is.
The flexibility of the shooting style does allow for certain kind of performances. Many scenes play on other characters’ reactions to Philip. As Philip’s current girlfriend Ashley, Elisabeth Moss has a moment where she stands up to him and you can literally see the empowerment wash over her face.
Unfortunately, the flexibility of shooting also compromised the audio. A lot of the audio is totally drowned out in a large movie theater. I had just seen another movie in the same theater, so the theater was clearly fine. The sound of Listen Up Philip was not recorded close enough to the actors, or they were low talking. Anyway, they need to loop that before the theatrical release. Maybe it’ll play fine on VOD.
Technical qualms aside, I really liked Listen Up Philip. It’s a bit thrilling when midway through my adulthood, after over a century of cinema history and a desensitized modern society, an artist can still create an A-hole so shocking and funny that I find it fascinating. Bravo too to Schwartzman for pulling it off.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and The Shelf Space Awards. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
