Match Point
Here's my review of Match Point when I first saw it in the theater:
Went and saw Match Point tonight. Very good movie. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Of course, it's only good if you really understand it. I heard a lot of people coming out of the theater saying how it was pointless and depressing.
It was good because of how very complex it was.
Let's start at the beginning of the movie with Chris' quote on luck. How we don't like to admit how much of our lives are out of our control, how so many events don't seem to have a purpose. Luck is as random as it is meaningless. Chris is a man who is losing faith. Not faith as in some greater power, but faith as in the basic belief that our lives have some sort of meaning. That there is a point to it all.
At one point someone (Tom?) quotes that "Despair is the path of least resistance," but Chris replies back that it is not despair, but faith. In a way he is right. People like to fool themselves into thinking everything is okay, and that they have power over the meaning in their lives. It's easier for us to deal with the tragedies of life by simply paving them over with happy thoughts. But if you do that you ignore a whole side to life. Life isn't all pretty flowers and sun and light. There is darkness there. Ignoring it does not make it go away.
Chris sees this more clearly than anything else. He seems to have a small obsession with the tragic. He also is desperately searching for some sign of meaning. Justice. Freedom.
Freedom is a real trouble for Chris. He is constantly trying to free himself of obligations. He quits tennis for free time, marries a rich girl for financial freedom, and shacks up with a hot girl for sexual freedom. The funny thing is that all of these attempts at freedom lead him to become more and more attached to obligations. His escapes always turn into limitations, each being stronger that the one before.
But even more important to him than freedom is justice. In a world that is completely random, how can there be any justice at all? Chris doesn't think there can be, but he desperately wants to be proven wrong. He is hanging onto faith by a thread. Because of this, Chris is constantly pushing limits. He is finding out how much he can get away with. In a just world, he would be found out and punished.
So he cheats on his wife and lies to his mistress. When he kills Nola, that is the final straw. He wants to be caught. This is his last desperate attempt at proving justice.
If you pay attention, there's something there that at first glance does not seem to fit. When he throws the ring, it bounces on the fence and lands on his side, which should signify his defeat. But when he goes to the police for questioning, he gets off scott-free, right? So he didn't really lose, right?
Wrong.
What happened with the murder investigation was the absolute worst thing that could have happened to Chris. He will have to live the rest of his life with that guilt, but that's the easy part. The hard part is that he was proven right. Justice doesn't exist. Meaning doesn't exist. There is no point to our lives. If there was, he'd be in jail. How can a man live if he has no faith?
The ironic part is that Chris was looking to be
punished, and he ended up receiving the worst punishment of all. If he
was really paying attention to the signs in his life, the fact that he
was proven right proves him wrong.
Chris was punished. There is
justice; it just never comes in the form you expect. There is meaning.
Sometimes, in the depths of despair you can find hope.
Comments
Keep in mind this was a post from an older blog, so it's been a while since I've seen the movie. I definitely want to see it again to solidify my philosophical opinion on it. In the mean time, if I screw anything up, I apologize.
1) Before the ghosts appear, the character Chris is up late, obsessively writing something at his computer. What? It's odd that we don't know, in fact, nothing we know about this character suggests that he's the kind to be driven to the keyboard to write anything - he's not the kind to sit up late doing business email, certainly. Nor would he dream about writing. I think Allen may be signaling Think About Writers.
This is after he kills Nola? I might be totally off base here...but maybe he was toying with writing a confession? But he keeps going back and forth because writing a confession would be the easy way out? He wants to be caught, and so writing a confession is natural, but it wouldn't prove that justice exists. It would be cheating.
I honestly don't remember this part, so I might be very wrong. :)
3) Now the ghosts show up, and start saying things that don't fit exactly with the movie. Scarlett says "prepare to pay the price", but, he gets away with it!. She says 'what you did was clumsy and full of holes' - ok that's true but it's not the kind of thing we say when describing crimes... you don't say a crime was full of holes. People may say a movie is clumsy and full of holes, and directors may say this kind of thing about their own work, in self-critical moments. She then goes on to say "your child paid the price". Who's that? The child not yet conceived? But his wife is pregnant at the time.....
As I stated above in the post, he did pay the price. Nothing worse could have happened. But that's irrelevant I think. I think these "ghosts" are part of his sub-concious or his conscience. He's berating himself, and he's not sure whether he should regret what he did or if he should be comforted by the fact that he will probably be caught. He's telling himself he'll get caught, that his crime was sloppy. But then maybe he regrets it when he thinks about the fact that if he does get caught, his child would have to grow up without a father. (Does he know about the kid yet?) Actually, either way, the kid will pay the price. Either no father, or a father that has sunken into nihilism and depression. He'll raise his kid to be just like him, intentionally or unintentionally.
I don't know, I'm just guessing right now, I'll have to go back and watch it again.
4) the ghosts are looking almost directly into the camera - you can't see him while they're talking. Leaves it a bit ambiguous as to whom they're talking to. The older woman doesn't understand why she had to be hurt.
You can't see him while they are talking because they are him?
Your theory about Woody Allen being self-critical here is very interesting, and sounds pretty possible. But I don't think that this stuff didn't make sense with the movie or was out of character for Chris. I think it might have had a double meaning. ;)
I'm not convinced that Chris is desperate for justice. I think he'd like to believe it exists and that it would be nice if something would happen to make him believe it exists. But he doesn't and that's just the way it is.
Personally, I believe that we can trust in the order of the universe. So from my perspective, I'd say Chris's reality had less to do with luck and more to do with the fact that we do create our own reality and the universe helps us in this endeavor. (What we think about expands.) He loved tragedy and despair even though he also wished there was some small measure of justice. But he didn't really believe in justice. So tragedy and despair is what he got. That, to me, is a form of justice. (Justice with a little "j"? It's not like a God came down and zapped him for being bad or anything.)
But, if you believe the world is based on luck rather than some sort of divine order, then discovering there is no meaning is not justice. It's just reality and meaning is wishful thinking.
But - the very end makes you wonder. Who is it that says of the baby, I don't care if he is great, I just want him to be lucky? When this is said, I remember Chris looking very forlorn which does make the ending very ambiguous. It could be pointing to a sort of justice - especially since the wedding ring fell backward rather than forward which, according to Chris's definition at the beginning of the movie is bad luck.
I like the ambiguity. It makes it a marvelous movie.
And yes, I agree that if you start out thinking that there is nothing other than luck, then the ending isn't suggesting justice, only suggesting reality. But that's what I find so ironic. The justice with a little j is much more subtle and subversive than the nihilist ever imagines. Of course Chris won't ever realize what happened to him there, he doesn't have the right "artificial obvious" (from Annie Dillard). He doesn't know what to look for. He's looking for a grand gesture, a real punishment, and he won't find it.
This movie was actually one of the things that helped convince me to believe in a panentheistic God. Combine this with John L'Heureux's The Shrine at Altamira, where the salvation doesn't come in the form we would have chosen, and it's somewhat complete.
Punishments don't have to come in the form we expect, and salvation doesn't usually come in the form we expect. It all points to a different mode of operation that runs behind all things. Human Justice is not supreme. The other kind is much more subtle, much more quiet, and much more powerful, if you only train yourself to notice it.