The case for neurotic – The Movie Filter

Today there are many strands of thought on just how the human brain evolved. As debate continues, University of Notre Dame philosophy professor Alvin Plantinga keenly argues that if we subscribe to an understanding of evolution that says everything about our belief-forming faculties is the result of natural selection, then we must accept the possibility that we cannot trust anything our brains tell us, because those same belief-forming faculties and senses would have evolved over time to not necessarily perceive an accurate portrayal of reality but instead the one most advantageous to our own survival. Ironically, this would mean that slight paranoia is in fact a more beneficial state of mind than one that relays a true assessment of our environment.

Somewhere, Woody Allen is smiling. Finally.

The famously neurotic comedian, writer and director once said, “I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love, or I had smallpox.” A more succinct and humorous illustration of neuroses may not exist. Allen’s quip is the very definition of neurotic, when even moments of joy can be tainted with self-defensive doubts and anxieties over any number of potential afflictions and imaginary shortcomings.

More than we care to admit, many of us as cultural consumers find neurotic characters not only entertaining, but almost uncomfortably relatable. From Michelangelo to Oscar Wilde to Howard Hughes, and Stanley Kubrick to Phil Spector, the art and outlook of successful neurotics has always held the fascination of those who are more secretively so.

Oscar nominee and new generation neurotic posterboy Jesse Eisenberg is working now with Woody Allen in the director’s upcoming Bop Decameron, but before that collaboration lands next year in a supernova of self-doubt and wide-eyed cynicism, the rising star of The Social Network. returns to the big screen this month with the pitch-black comedy 30 Minutes or Less.

Eisenberg plays an overly anxious pizza delivery guy on a routine run when thugs force him to wear a live bomb that will explode if he does not rob a bank before time expires. It turns out nothing gets a neurotic’s attention like strapping a bomb to his chest. With support from Parks and Recreation star Aziz Ansari, 30 Minutes or Less could be the most sarcastically raucous bank robbery film since 1990 and Bill Murray’s underrated epic of ineptitude Quick Change.

Much has been made of the typecasting of the 27-year-old actor, and it is true that from his feature debut in 2001’s Rodger Dodger and on through The Squid and the Whale, Adventureland, Zombieland and The Social Network Eisenberg has almost exclusively played various shades of anxiety and obsessiveness. Surely Eisenberg will stretch into new characters on screen, but when that day comes, I’ll be in mourning. The passing of this nerd nervous phase of Eisenberg’s career will feel like the passing of existence in another of Woody Allen’s famous quotations—“Life is full of misery, loneliness and suffering,” Allen said. “And it’s all over much too soon.”

30 Minutes or Less debuts in theaters Aug. 12.

Reach Jeff Roedel at [email protected].