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Is
this, then, his comeuppance? Will he be miserable for what
he's done, live with guilt eating away at his insides? Not
exactly. He is miserable, but he was miserable to begin
with, and in a scene near the end of the film in which he is
haunted by his victims, he shows little remorse. Even if he
were to feel bad, he deserves to rot in jail for his double
homicide, so the occasional pang of conscience is not quite
punishment enough.
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The Role of Chance in Human Affairs |
The recurring theme of this film is the supreme importance of chance in
human affairs, which the characters actually discuss on several
occasions, in typical Woody Allen fashion. The visual metaphor of a
tennis ball hitting a net and bouncing straight up is used to great
effect: sometimes you get lucky and it lands on the other side of the
net, but sometimes your luck runs out and it lands on your side of the
net. Within the context of this plot, sometimes you get away with
murder, not to mention adultery, but sometimes you end up staring at
your fellow adulterer down the barrel of a shotgun. It all depends upon
your luck.
Except that the real
world doesn't work that way. In the real world, luck has a way of
evening out, and people tend to get what they deserve. This is why a
tennis match is very rarely decided on a lucky bounce, to say nothing of
a whole tournament or an entire career. In this film, though, we see
Chris get dozens of lucky breaks (and by implication, he gets hundreds
more) as he somehow successfully hides his ongoing affair, and then his
murders, from everyone. We keep thinking (and hoping) that he's going to
get what's coming to him, but he never does. This stretches the limits
of credibility as far as the most contrived action flick.
We're supposed to believe
that Chris's father-in-law, who runs a successful company, does not know
how to read people well enough to know that he's being played? That his
mother-in-law is unrelentingly suspicious of her other child's love
interest but gives him a free pass? That his neglected wife does not
suspect for more than a fleeting instant that he's cheating on her? That
his co-workers and managers do not question his frequent and poorly
explained absences from the office? That Nola's co-worker, who knows
that she was heading to meet her lover the day she was murdered, can't
connect the dots? That no one catches Chris sneaking off with a rifle
from his adopted family's collection, or putting it back, or clumsily
hiding the jewelry he stole to make his murders look like a robbery gone
bad? In the real world, some people do quite literally get away with
murder indeed, some world leaders have gotten away with murdering
millions but this guy would have been caught several times over.
In the end, we are left with a story that is morally bankrupt. It is not
merely that Chris is not held responsible for his destructive actions.
If chance is the main determinant in human affairs, then neither is he
responsible for his successes and neither is anyone else. According to
this notion, it is a matter of luck whether or not someone gets caught
for his crimes, whether someone succeeds or fails in life, and even
whether or not someone gets trapped in a situation in which one feels
compelled to commit adultery or murder. The more one accepts that chance
plays a major role in life, the more one relinquishes personal
responsibility for how one's life turns out. This may allow us to
pretend we are blameless, but only at the cost of devaluing our actual
achievements.
The nihilistic notion
that chance is the main factor in life is both insulting and dangerous.
It discredits and discourages active engagement in the pursuit of one's
goals, while excusing and encouraging passive resignation to the
vicissitudes of life. Short of being born in some authoritarian hell
in which the average person really does have little control over his own
fortunes the most important determining factor in a person's life is
not chance. The most important factor is character: the kind of person I
am and the kinds of choices I make with whatever life throws at me, good
or bad.
Match Point is not
completely without value, because it addresses an interesting theme, and
can engender some interesting discussions. The film ultimately fails,
however, first by neglecting to offer us any sympathetic characters, and
second by inflating the role of chance beyond any realistic proportions.
With regards to this larger issue, Allen simply comes down on the wrong
side of the net.
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Several years ago, to much controversy, Woody Allen left his then-wife
for another woman: his then-wife's adopted daughter, and hence someone
for whom he presumably had played a father-like role. It was a
disconcerting development, but one could at least imagine that theirs
was an unconventional love, and that Allen had braved the predictable
controversy that arose in order to follow his heart.