Barry's Blog

Years ago actor Steve Martin's character in the film, Grand Canyon, observed, "All of life's riddles are solved in the movies." While the films of Woody Allen hardly attempt to solve the riddles of life, his latest film, Match Point, raises significant, albeit serious questions, about the kind of universe we live in. Is life all chance or is it a dance? Because Allen's early films are some of the funniest ever made, it is often assumed that he is a comic at heart, which has often led to misunderstandings about his films. But now and then, Allen attempts to remove the confusion by producing films which, sometimes elegantly and sometimes brashly, present his view of the world that is essentially nihilistic (without meaning and purpose). In film after film, he has announced an absolute lack of faith in any moral ordering of the universe - and still, people think he is joking.

In Match Point, arguably his most satisfying and best movie since his critically-acclaimed Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), the director again brings us the bad news, with the setting in London instead of Manhattan, Brit actors instead of Americans, and with a dark humor that rivals any of his previous films. As a review in The New York Times put it, "this is a Champagne cocktail laced with strychnine."

The film stars Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Chris Wilton, a poor boy from Ireland turned social climber,  who is a former tennis pro who left the tour and now works as a club pro at a posh country club in London. As he helps the rich members polish their ground strokes, he meets rich young Tom (Matthew Goode), an amiable yet unserious heir to a business fortune, who invites Chris to attend the opera with his family. Tom has a pretty sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer), eager to become romantically involved with Chris.  Presiding over this upper-crust London family is a corporate giant of a father, Alec (Brian Cox), who would be quite happy to find room at the top of the family business for this book-loving future son-in-law (Chris is seen reading Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment early on in the film). The snake in this Eden is Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson), an American actress whose difficult challenge to make it big on the London stage is softened by enjoying the privileges that come with being Tom's plaything of a fiancee. Tom likes Nola, but one wonders to what degree? And do his parents approve? And these two outsiders, Chris and Nola, who are attempting to make inroads into the London high-society scene, as fate would have it, become more attracted to each other than to the wealthy family siblings. Suffice it to say that all is decided in the fullness of time, and  I'll stay mum on the details in order not to spoil the film's twists and turns, which are clever, but hard to anticipate.

Instead, let's consider briefly the underlying philosophical issues embraced by Allen in this film. As Roger Ebert has observed in his review of Match Point, "One reason for the fascination of Woody Allen's Match Point is that each and every character is rotten. This is a thriller not about good versus evil, but about various species of evil engaged in a struggle for survival of the fittest - or, as the movie makes clear, the luckiest." Ebert is right when is observes that, "the movie is more about plot and moral vacancy than about characters."

While in Allen's earlier film, Crimes and Misdemeanors, he raises the age-old question of whether a man can commit a heinous crime and live with himself, without genuine guilt and remorse, in Match Point he seems to have moved further away from any kind of worldview that embraces a moral Right and Wrong. In a December documentary titled, Woody Allen: A Life in Film, conducted by the celebrated Time Magazine reporter Richard Schickel, Allen brazenly notes that he does not even believe in God. To Allen, Fate, Chance, or Blind Luck has become his god. "I'd rather be lucky than good," Chris tells us as the movie opens, and we see a tennis ball striking the tape at the top of the net -sometimes luck has it that it goes over the net and you win the point, and other times it falls on your side and you lose the point. If you think you know where this mind teaser of a movie is going, think again. Allen's Match Point  in some ways serves as a "meditation" on a world where Luck plays a greater role than an absent God. By the film's end, if you are like me, you may find it morally repugnant that your expectation for justice is not realized in the shocker of an ending. 

You may be wondering, though,  what in the world does Allen's Match Point have to do with finishing well in life? Let me suggest that it makes all the difference in the world. For if we do not live in a moral universe, where there are Rights and Wrongs, where we at least have the hope that our labors and aspirations will be rewarded, if not in this life, then in a life to come, then this life is nothing but a futile existence, signifying nothing. If all is determined by a Blind Fate, it further suggests that our hopes and desires to find meaning and purpose in life, to work with excellence and integrity, to raise our children with the hopes that they will be godly, law-abiding contributors for the good of society, is but an empty shibboleth. Allen would do well to remind himself of Dostoevsky's most famous maxim: "If there is no God, then all things are permitted." I'm not convinced that he truly lives his life in such a way.

"What difference does Heaven make to earth, to now, to our lives? Only the difference between hope and despair in the end, between two totally different visions of life, between 'chance' or 'the dance.'  At death we find out which vision is true: does it all go down the drain in the end, or are all the loose threads finally tied together into a gloriously perfect tapestry? Do the tangled paths through the forest of life lead to the golden castle or over the cliff and into the abyss? Is death a door or a hole?" -Peter Kreeft

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow