Woody Allen's "Match Point" and Robert Frost's sonnet "Design"

Rating: Null/10 (4 February 2007)

Woody Allen's "Match Point" has many allusions to other films , operas, and novels. Robert Frost's sonnet , "Design," deals with a similar theme and a universal question about the design and order in the world or luck and blind chance governing nature and human destiny. Ultimately , this question of design behind the universe leads to the question , "Does God Exist?" Allen and Frost seem to conclude that life on earth is governed by chance;therefore God does not exist. A closer look at both works reveals that there is a God behind what has happened . The spider in the poem is drawn instinctively to the white heal-all and the moth . In "Match Point," Chris seems to be free from his crime. But in the last scene , the viewer sees that Chris's punishment has just begun. Chris's wife, their baby , Terrance, her parents and her brother are all in the same frame, drinking champagne , laughing , and toasting , and ignoring Chris who has walked away. The camera pans to the left and stops at Chris in close-up . His anguished face reveals pain and suffering. Even though he has been vindicated by the secular law , Divine Justice has meted out a worse punishment - guilt ,loneliness, a prisoner of his wife and her family and their wealth . Frost ends his poem "What but design of darkness to appall/ if Design govern in a thing so small." God , perhaps a "Design of Darkness," does exist after all."