Writer-director Alex Ross Perry is no stranger to controversy. When his prior film, The Color Wheel, dropped a particularly vile plot bomb at its climax, it seemed like a crude tack-on from another movie. In Listen Up Philip, Perry launches a much slower-igniting agitation but one equally demoralizing. Jason Schartzman plays Philip Lewis Friedman, a novelist of some repute, who takes himself seriously. At the start of the film he looks up old girlfriends and former college chums and, after barely saying hello, flays them mercilessly for all their shortcomings, especially any underestimation of him.
His publisher and his live-in girlfriend, Ashley (an excellent Elizabeth Moss), get even worse treatment. Philip has little patience for the feelings of others when he’s having such a smug good time pontificating his pitiful, albeit occasionally witty, chin-wag.
If he respects anyone at all, it’s the older, esteemed novelist Ike Zimmerman, who has taken an interest in mentoring the young turk. When Philip basically just suddenly leaves his New York apartment to take residence upstate with Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce), his matter of fact announcement startles Ashley. Moss’s character, simple on the surface yet ultimately complex, adds the missing emotional punch to the film as she tries to deal with her mess.
Philip eventually takes on a college teaching job where Zimmerman once taught. To no one’s surprise, he’s a reclusive professor who refuses to even engage in conversation with his students unless it takes place in class or during office hours. Pryce is as good an actor as there is but Zimmerman feels more like a sketch of an old jaded novelist than an old jaded novelist. Suggestions he is a barely disguised model of Philip Roth also don’t add up to much, unless you think it’s a good idea to portray Roth onscreen by first stripping everything Jewish from his character. Zimmerman’s adult daughter sometimes shows up at the house he and Philip share to remind us from yet another angle how much of a misanthrope Philip is. Oh, and, the mighty baritone of no less than Eric Bogosian narrates these proceedings, recalling Rod Serling. But the narration is as void of interest as is the face of Philip, which Perry relishes giving is in frequent close-ups. The 16mm film stock no more than puts a creative ribbon on a disappointing package.
After telling his publisher he’s not interested in doing a book tour or otherwise promoting his novel, Philip recognizes a female publishing assistant who seems interested in him. He insist they’ve met before. She doesn’t recall. Naturally where this is heading is Philip only cares about giving her shit for refusing his advances when he was an unknown neophyte. Now that she pays him attention, he doesn’t want it because it’s tarnished by her not having recognized his charm and genius beforehand.
And on and on…..Perry’s trick this time is to put forth a totally unlikeable character and then challenge his viewers to accept Philip, whether or not a sliver of redemption can be found. The view from here is it’s not a matter of choice between praising or burying Philip, but of finally being bored to death by him.