Match Point

One of Woody Allen’s favorite worlds is that of F. Scott Fitzgerald—the world of the beautiful, wealthy, and highly educated. In one way or the other we have seen it in Manhattan, Hannah and her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and elsewhere. Usually that world is in or somewhere near New York City, though in Match Point it is in London. All the characters in the film—or most of them—are handsome and beautiful, and their attractive physical appearance is a shell that cloaks an essential hollowness—the actress who can’t get a part, the tennis player who can’t survive on the pro tour, the woman who can’t conceive.

Most Woody Allen films have a Woody Allen persona—often portrayed by Allen himself, though in the last decade or so he has taken to have other, younger actors play the part. In Match Point there is no Allen persona, though there is clearly a central character, Chris Wilton, played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers. There are certainly characteristics that Allen and Meyer’s character have in common (or that one could speculate they share). Chris Wilton is Woody Allen’s version of Tom Ripley, from the Patricia Highsmith novels, though Chris is at heart a coward and lacks the flair and soulless style of Ripley.

It takes quite a while into the film before it becomes clear (at least to me) that Meyers plays a thoroughly compromised, unlikeable character. He is in a sense the epitome of a certain type in our own time, an ambitious individual willing to do whatever it takes, at whatever cost to others, to get what he wants, to avoid having to acknowledge his mistakes and his own depraved self.

In the film’s last scene, Chris’s father-in-law, raising a toast to his new grandson, comments that the child, with “parents like Chloe and Chris, will be great with anything he sets his mind to.” Chloe’s brother retorts, “I don’t care if he’s great, I just hope that he’s lucky.” This could be the key word of the film: luck. For only by a series of “lucky” incidents, or perhaps it is better to say “chance” incidents, Chris is able to get everything he wants—employment at a tennis resort, a life of wealth, an affair with a beautiful woman, escape from a murder change, a secure place in life. The film details the incidents that make these all possible. But skill is involved as well, as the film’s title reflects--“Match Point”—along with the game of tennis we see Chris playing at various moments in the film (he’s a tennis pro who leaves the pro circuit because it requires too much time and dedication, neither of which he’s willing to give). Chris carefully plots out his life, marrying Chloe because of her father’s wealth, conceiving the nearly perfect murder plot.

A third unifying device in the film is opera. A particular operatic theme, probably from La Bohème, plays often in the film, especially at crucial moments. It creates a tragic context for the events and characters—if the viewer needs that assistance—suggesting a continuity between the avarice and lust that drives Chris Wilton with the larger themes of literature and art.

In the next-to-last scene of the film, Wilton has fallen to sleep on the sofa, and when he wakes he hears sounds in the house. He goes into the kitchen for a drink of water and turns to discover the two women he has killed, and they talk about what he has done. She tells him he is going to suffer for his crimes, that he has made mistakes and his comments to her make clear that he is willing to live with the guilt he feels. This scene strikes me as contrived, but as a rhetorical device it helps us see that Chris is aware of the moral horror he has committed and that he accepts it as the necessary payment for the life and the affluence he has won—the attractive wife who worships him, the father-in-law who makes clear that he is willing to rescue Chris from whatever financial difficulties he might encounter, and whose bequest will secure his future. This scene casts the film in the mold of a morality play, with Chris as the protagonist whose actions damn him.

That Allen doesn’t make Chris pay for his crimes—either through guilt or through arrest and conviction in a court of law—is a commentary on the fact that the wealthy often get away with such crimes, and that the world we live in is not one in which those who commit damnable acts necessarily pay for them.

Allen’s 1989 film Crimes and Misdemeanors has a similar plot and theme, though in that film the main characters are middle-aged, from New York, and the moral ambiguities of the film seem more consistent with their lives and demeanors.

In Match Point one of the most disturbing aspects of the film is how blithely ruthless and destructive a handsome and attractive character such as Chris Wilton can be. On the one hand he is the worst of criminals; on the other hand, he is no criminal (in the conventional sense) at all—he is a normal upper-class character, living his life, pursuing his dreams, who just happens to find murder a convenient device to push him towards his goals.

This is a film worth watching, though it is often slow and deliberate, and once you catch on precisely to what sort of character Wilton is, you can’t care much about him, though you want to know what he is going to do, how he is going to respond to the problems that confront him. You do care for the people whose lives he exploits and puts at risk.

Match Point is the best film Allen has made in a decade. It justifies his continuing reputation as a serious and accomplished filmmaker.