How we get away with murder

Rating: 8/10 (5 February 2006)

I cannot accept the idea that Mr. Allen would be in any way interested in making a film about murder or even sex for that matter. I have always considered the man a pure intellectual at best as director and worst as actor when words keeps pouring out of his mouth whenever he is in a frame. In my humble opinion I am not mistaken since the sex scenes in Match Point does not involve nudity nor the murders bloodshed.
To me Match Point is a tragedy in the classic meaning of the word. When Chris has to account for his murders to his victims in the end, he quotes - and that cannot be an accident - one of the greatest Greek tragedy playwrights Sophocles. So the form is tragedy but the theme itself is a metaphor. What Chris truly killed is his youth aspirations which is to make a real contribution to the world. He killed his true passion impersonated by Nola, and he killed the fruit of his passion represented by his unborn child. Neither his athletic abilities, his interest for Dostojevski, Strindberg and opera, nor his MBA can save him.
The metaphor apply to most of us. Applied to Mr. Allen himself, the firm would be the film industry. The in laws would be the warm welcome of international acclaim for his work and fans who keep watching his movies. Nola would be his true passions which are all the scripts that are being rejected by producers over and over again and the unborn child are scripts that he doesn't even dare to write on paper. Condemned to be a society man he cannot both mechanically produce films that brings him fame and fortune and at the same time be consumed by ideas that leads to 'nowhere' so he sees only one solution to this dilemma which is eliminating the passionate path in his life.
When we get older and look back the way we once were, the dreams, ideas and loves we had, and when we at the same time look at the what remains of it then maybe we can congratulate ourselves that our apartment has a view over the river Thames, but then again we look at that child, which is the personification of our compromise to society and the life style we have chosen, then suddenly we might realize that we have indeed in a way killed those dreams, ideas and loves, and because we are just about the only ones who knows about it, we actually got away with it. And quite successfully jolly good fellow.
And tennis and luck? Well, I think Mr. Allen just used all those references to the game of tennis as a format for those who cannot see beyond that level. The movie Match Point has nothing to do with luck whatsoever. Luck in Match Point is just a pun, a cinematographic pun. And serving at match point Chris just end up where he started of: is the match worth winning or worse is the match worth playing?