Survival of the Luckiest...

Rating: 10/10 (14 September 2016)

And I thought "Crimes and Misdemeanors" was cynical because it established the triumph of reason over heart, "March Point" is even worse, because Allen finds something more valuable than reason: luck.
Speaking of reason, there is a reason why Woody Allen is such a prolific filmmaker, none of his films look for profitability or critical acclaim, he makes what he thinks is good, and it's enough (we're talking of the director who didn't show up in the Oscars when "Annie Hall" won the Best Picture Oscar) but it takes many good films to reach once or twice a decade, the 'Nirvana'. Some Allen's movies hit the perfect chord and are so impressively flawless that they always make you feel like you've seen nothing of Allen yet.
Out of the forty-something movies he made, I have certainly watched three dozens and well, I wasn't prepared by how good "Match Point" would be. Even halfway through the film, I didn't know where it was going, but near the third act, I knew I was watching a Woody Allen film with capital A. The ending made me realize it was more serious than that, it was probably one of his best. I had to watch it a second time then a third time, and I maintain that it's one of his best, and for two reasons.
On a technical level (to get through it), this is a film that is flawlessly acted and scenes flow with such fluidity that when you see it again, you can see that there's no detail that doesn't play a pivotal role, yet without its inclusion feeling contrived or artificial. The second aspect is the way the ending makes the beginning's point, the film has a message to tell from the story and it's not until the last five minutes that we realize how brilliantly Allen toyed with our expectations, making the point we expected him to make but not as we thought.
I will get back to the story because being too talkative about the ending might spoil the surprise. The film is about an Irish tennis teacher Chris Wilton (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a young man with dashing good looks who gets a job in an English country club. He meets Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), they exchange a few words about music, earning him an immediate invitation to an Opera concert. Tom comes from a rich family (the father, played by Brian Cox "own" companies) and they seem to like Chris, and the daughter, Chloe (Emily Mortimer) instantly falls in love with him. He gets Chloe and a job in Daddy's company as collateral gift. This is like Cinderella story in speed motion.
And there's no catch actually, this is no Faustian pact of anything of that sort, Chris has basically everything a sensitive man would look for, especially one of his background, a steady job, a loving and pretty wife and money, so Chris is the one who looks for trouble. He meets Nora, Tom's fiancée, a sexy aspiring actress, and it's not love but lust-at-first-sight, Chris is invaded by an immediate and intense desire to possess her. And since their luscious interactions behind the ping pong table, we know it's a matter of time before they succumb to the call of lust, catalyzed by anger, booze and rain.
But this sexual intercourse has only intensified his appetite. The situation gets tricky when he realizes he can't renounce his lifestyle either. This is not the Cornelian conflict between duty and passion, but between greed and sex, the two drivers of society. In a way, Chris is the pure embodiment of modernity in its most pervert form, like when he marries Chloe and gets Nora pregnant. I already had feelings of déjà vu but the pregnancy subplot immediately reminded me of a classic of American Cinema "A Place in the Sun". Yet the film was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, maybe it's a way to acknowledge that the "American Tragedy" classic is a universal story with infinite variations.
Allen also seems to have borrowed elements from his critically acclaimed "Crimes and Misdemeanors", which featured a similar situation but was more about religion, moral and the dilemma between reason and conscience. In "Match Point", Woody chooses a different angle, a sort of existential tennis match between work and luck. The film opens with the sight of a tennis ball swinging back and forth like so many up and downs that life has to provide and then the ball hits the net and bounce, it's all about the side of the court it will fall in: one means victory, another means defeat.
Life is as simple as that and I'm in total agreement because I used to believe in chronically bad luck, on being screwed, but I realized life was made through a few hit-or-miss moments and all the hard work of the world can see its effect canceled if you make the wrong move at the wrong time, sometimes you're lucky, sometimes not but never underestimate the potentiality of luck within the bad luck. Woody Allen who loved to play or portray unlucky schmucks caught in the midst of modernity, focuses here in the case of a particularly lucky character and we wait for the moment it changes. Maybe this is why it doesn't feel like an Allen film, but I'm not even sure there's such a thing as a typical Allen film.
I had just seen a masterpiece about 'bad luck' called "A Serious Man" and now I have its polar opposite with "Match Point". The two movies have interesting things to say about the way we control our own fates, whether under the direction of God or hazard, which also echoes the religious undertones of "Crimes and Misdemeanors", but someone said "Hazard is the anonymous way to call God", sometimes, it might be the anonymous way to call the devil as well, and I will say no more.