Match Point
The most recent volume of Spiritual Cinema Circle includes a short film by Scott Cervine entitled The Miraculous Collision. The basis of the short film is Woody Allen’s film Match Point which greatly troubles Cervine’s character (who always dreamed that one day he would single-handedly wipe out world hunger) in the film. He claims the movie is all about chance; that life is just full of chance, nothing more. And we can’t handle that. So what we do is make things up and pretend we create our own reality to make ourselves feel better about it. He said he walked out of the movie theater thinking maybe that’s what he had done with his belief that all is right with the world. He just made it up. And more, he made up an encounter with his dead father because the rest of life just wasn’t happening for him.
At the beginning the film, he dreams his dad is on the ceiling writing something like, “Your only limitation is the voice of fear”. When Scott (I can’t remember his character’s name) goes on a quest, he experiences the voice of fear personified as himself. This voice tells him - “It is all chance. If you could truly impact your day to day existence, it would be heaven, not earth. Life just is. Your only chance for peace is to accept your limitations.”
The rest of the film is about Scott slashing through this voice of fear and reconnecting with his father which is apparently metaphorical for “all is right with the world”. It’s not just about chance - we can trust that all is right with the world.
So - after watching the short, I went back and watched Match Point (which I briefly reviewed previously here).
***Contains spoilers***
It begins,
“The man who said I’d rather be lucky than good saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependant upon on luck. It is scary to think so much is out of one’s control. There are moments in a match when a ball hits the top of a net and in that split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward and you win or maybe it doesn’t and you lose.”
The main character is Chris Wilton who, in the beginning of the film, tells Chloe (Chris’s love interest) that he wants to do something special, to make a contribution. Nola (Chris’s lust interest) claims that Chris is aggressive but Chris says he is simply naturally competitive. I had the sense throughout the film that the ball keeps going forward for Chris but that this isn’t because of luck. It’s because he is controlling.
During a dinner conversation, Chloe brings up the fact that she doesn’t believe in luck, she believes in hard work. Chris makes the comment that science is confirming that all existence is here by blind chance - that there is no purpose or design. Chloe responds by saying that she doesn’t care - she loves every minute of it. Chris claims he envies her for this.
This is sort of a typical Woody Allen theme. The naive people of “faith” in his films are those whose lives are the happiest. Allen himself has said that he wishes he could have their faith but doesn’t think it is a reality. He considers being bestowed with faith as “luck”. In Crimes and Misdemeanors, he says of the rabbi who is going blind, “He’s blessed and lucky because he has the best gift anyone could have. He has genuine religious faith.” While Chloe isn’t necessarily religious, she does have religious sensibilities and talks about doing “the right thing” just as the blind rabbi did in Crimes and Misdemeanors. (Allen himself claims the universe is at best indifferent. And reiterates, “At best!”)
In continuing the conversation, Tom (Chloe’s brother and Chris’s friend) quotes their pastor: “Despair is the path of least resistance”. Chris counters this by saying “I think faith is the path of least resistance”. Chloe immediately changes the subject.
Clearly, despair is very attractive to Chris. He loves tragedy and is dumb struck by Nola who is almost the personification of despair (the despairing actress) and has the tragic life history to go with her despair. As the film plays out, it does appear he is correct. There is a sort of predictability that exists within the faithful that does not exist within those who are despairing. The truly faithful will most likely do “the right thing”, but there is no telling what someone in despair will do. Nola, in her despair, threatens to break up Chris’s marriage and becomes uncontrollable. Chris, in his, commits premeditative murder. And again, according to Allen, if you are bestowed with faith, it’s simply because you are lucky. While Chloe absolutely loves life, Chris sees life as tragic.
Chris is calculating. I had the sense throughout the film that everything was sort of like a poker match or something. That Chris is continually playing people and calling their bluff in order to insure that luck stays on his side.
So here is where Cervine might be on to something. If you believe all is right with the world, then there is no need to control events. You can simply experience them. And if it is all about experience, might as well focus on the positive (which he discovers is not the same as denying the negative). On the other hand, if you think life is all about luck, this is likely going to make you extremely controlling (or despondent). It’s more about making things go your way than about trusting that all is as it “should” be.
When Nola gets pregnant, Chris explains that it is incredible bad luck. Nola says it is a child conceived out of passion and that she is pregnant and Chloe isn’t because he doesn’t love Chloe. But when confronted with the ghost of Nola about having killed his own child, Chris quotes Sophocles - “to never have been born may be the greatest boon of all.” (I had to look up boon. It means blessing.)
After Chris kills Nola, he does feel incredibly guilty for what it is he’s done. But part of that guilt is associated with “luck”. (He makes the side comment that he just hasn’t gotten lucky yet). The officer investigating the crime assumes that Nola was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and got in the way of a robbery. He says that Nola simply picked the wrong time to come up - that some people don’t have any luck. But the reality is her murder wasn’t “bad luck”. Her murder was premeditated, not accidental. Chris killed her because she threatened to break up his marriage (which would end the lifestyle he had grown accustomed to).
When Chris encounters the ghost of Nola and the old woman, Nola tells him that he will pay the price - that his scheme is full of flaws. Chris replies that would be good because it would offer a small justice, some small measure of hope for the possibility of meaning.
But in the end, when Chris is throwing out all of the old women’s jewelry he took to make the motive look like robbery, her wedding band “hits the net” and falls back rather than forward. It falls backward. And a man who later commits a murder in the same neighborhood is found with the ring in his pocket and Chris is off the hook. That the wedding band fell backwards when Chris threw it seems to indicate that Chris is unlucky.
I saw this differently the first time I watched it and Kristin referred me to her post after she saw it at the theater. At first I thought it was like Crimes and Misdemeanors - where you commit murder and get away with it - both in terms of nobody finding out and in terms of your own conscience. Just give it a little time and life goes on just as it was. That the ring falls backward does seem to indicate that Chris hasn’t gotten by with it. But I’m not sure that what he regrets is having committed murder. I think what he regrets is that he received no proof whatsoever that life is anything but luck. But maybe that’s the same thing? Chris loves tragedy and this is truly tragic.
I’m not sure I agree that Woody Allen had a change of heart since Crimes and Misdemeanors, however. I don’t think Chris’s regret points to any sort of justice. Just the opposite, actually. I think Woody Allen would claim that the reason people believe Chris’s regret points to justice is because they are attempting to create meaning where there is none. I don’t necessarily agree with this, of course. But on a second watching of the film, I didn’t come away with any sense that Woody Allen has come to believe the universe cares. I definitely could be wrong, however.
Comments
This may be true, I'm not all that familiar with Allen. But, I would counter that it's not the regret itself that proves that there is Justice (although it doesn't come in the form we expect), but rather that the what the main character was seeking the entire movie was decisively cut from him by the fact that he wasn't caught.
He may not have intended it, but it certainly comes across, at least to me. And not in a sappy, want-to-believe-it type of way. I guess you could call it the justice that isn't kitsch. Is that justice with a small j? ;)