“Listen Up Philip” is a movie about men who despise women. Written and directed by Alex Ross Perry, and starring Jason Schwartzman as the antagonizing title character, the film, which screened this week at the New York Film Festival, has more, of course, that it wants to communicate — how those same women refuse to let those men ruin their lives; the sway of cultural influence and affectation — and, to be clear right at the beginning, the film certainly doesn’t endorse the behavior of its main characters. There is no path to discovery, of pulling away at a mask. They are horrible people from the first frame until the last, drowning so deep in their own narcissism that there’s no hope of coming up for air.
Philip is almost too much to handle. The narration that slips in and out of the film (voiced by Eric Bogosian) is both overbearing and funny, first because it seems so self-serious and opposed to what is happening on screen, and secondly because you can image Philip, a novelist, sulking around the streets of New York with a narrator present in his head, justifying and explaining his every decision. He’s the kind of writer who’s more consumed with the idea of being a writer than, it seems, the act of writing itself.
Although that last part is not entirely clear, maybe intentionally. While we never read any of Philip’s words, we understand from most people around him that he is a good writer. His novels are as successful as novels can be, despite his widespread arrogance. This is not the story of a failed writer with an inflated ego, but one who is respected, which complicates the portrait. We can’t really feel sorry for him. His attitude is not based on failure, but success. He’s not a sore loser but a sore winner. His scorched-earth policy toward everything around him, including his photographer girlfriend Ashley (Elizabeth Moss), is based on the image he has in his head of what he’s supposed to be like. Like a good novel, a novelist excels in conflict, not stasis.
Unfortunately, Philip is encouraged in his behavior by his new friend, the famous author Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce). The most obvious Philip Roth influence in the film, Zimmerman, aside from sharing a name with one of Roth’s most famous characters, bears a striking resemblance to the real author’s public image — grey hair, sweaters, and a penchant for crankiness and mistreatment of women. Ike takes Philip in as his mentor, in turn drawing him into his exiled and depressing world. During an extended stay at Ike’s home outside the city, Philip encounters his daughter, Melanie (Krysten Ritter), who becomes as much of an imagined foil for the narrative Philip has constructed around himself as she remains for her father, who conflates her existence with the failed marriage to her mother, which he crushed under the weight of his own ego and selfishness.
There’s also a third female character that enters the film towards the end, Yvette, a French professor at the college Philip miserably begins teaching at. At first she hates him, jealous at how easy he got the position and how much she had to work for it, but soon implausibly falls for him. But the film is not concerned with how they fell in love but how Philip inevitably pushes her away.
“Listen Up Philip” would have been an unbearable film if not for Ross’s penchant for letting the narrative slip away from the main character. The most notable example of this is the attention paid on Ashley, who is shown fully going through the motions of her separation from Philip. As much as she annoyed him, he got under her skin, and her transformation from allowing Philip to walk all over her to fully blocking him from her life is displayed with painful attention to detail, and offers a rare instance of hope in the film.
Unfortunately, it’s one of the few, if not only moment of its kind in the film. There is no such transformation in the cards for Philip. The most tragic thing about his character, and the film itself, is how early you realize this is somebody who is fully invested in the person he’s created, and will never change. He will continue to squeeze himself into others’ lives and walk away with a trail of flames behind him. If “Listen Up Philip” is a condemnation of men like the title character, it also doesn’t blame the women who get wrapped up with them. Misery loves company, but company doesn’t need to stick around.
