Woody Allen's Stunning Film Noire Tribute to Stanley Kubrick

Rating: 9/10 (24 February 2011)

Woody Allen is fond of quoting other great artists, and often includes samples, snippets and glimpses of their work in his own. For Match Point, a very sly subtle murder thriller, you would think his inspiration must be Hitchcock. Or maybe Dostoevsky. Or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Or possibly even himself. You'd be wrong. Dead wrong. The most direct influence this time is the great Stanley Kubrick whose classic Eighteenth Century period piece Barry Lyndon sets a clear model of high style and languid pacing. Kubrick's sprawling tale of an Irish commoner—whose fate is no more determined by his own ambitions than it is by sheer arbitrary luck—luxuriates in visual splendor. Woody, too, lavishes great attention on the continual procession of impeccable London locales and rambling country estates, and on the stunningly attractive characters who inhabit them. Scarlett Johansson's radiant beauty, Woody seems to suggest, is reason enough to film her. When she's on screen everything is suddenly so intensified, so much more visceral. She may have a clumsy delivery and often awkward physicality, but her voluptuous contours and magnificent face mercilessly seduces the camera. Likewise, her counterpart, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, possesses a face engineered for film. His full sensual lips echo Scarlet's, as if implying that their ill fated lives are not only metaphysically preordained, but also genetically inevitable.
Kubrick, himself a native New Yorker (Bronx) who transplanted himself to England in 1961 to work independent of the Hollywood nonsense, enjoyed film simply for its own aesthetics. He took excruciating care in composing, lighting and staging his scenes and the results are often breathtaking moments of cinematic art. Woody saw in Barry Lyndon an enviable standard of indulgent visuals, and like his own masterpiece homage to his cherished hometown, Manhattan, he spared no effort in capturing iconic views and vistas of posh London and the Arcadian countryside. While Kubrick's tale meanders for over three hours, Woody has limited his to just two, but even this modest length out lasts his usual film by a full thirty minutes. This extra half hour Woody invests in both developing well rounded complex lead characters, and also reveling in the often spectacular country landscapes. Some viewers will undoubtedly find fault with the intentionally thinly drawn support characters—more elegant props than actual personalities—but this contrivance only heightens the allegorical quality of this severely morbid morality tale.
It moves along gracefully at first, gently developing a hypnotically pulsing rhythm that gradually builds and quickens as the predicament surprisingly grows dire. After a series of exceptionally well paced set pieces confidently establishing the form that this thrill ride will take, it eventually, inexorably, explodes into a frantic, feverish fit of mayhem.
Upon reflection I realized that there's an awful dread that haunts most of this film—a palpable evil presence—that Kubrick would be proud of. And Hitchcock, too, for that matter. The crime is utterly ghastly, unspeakably horrible, and all the more shocking for the early languorous pace. This is a Woody Allen few, if any, fans will recognize. For this one he has fully unleashed the dark demon that he only tentatively brandished in his earlier similar tale of spiritual nihilism, 1989's Crimes and Misdemeanors. The sin in that one was second hand, distant, and therefor rather abstract and theoretical. But in this deeply sinister picture, the transgression is total and absolute; the hands of the killer are now intimately near the heart and soul of the protagonist. Allen has built an even more confining cell for his monstrously guilty prisoner, but ironically, outrageously, horribly, he also has also entrusted him with the keys. It's so disturbing, this story. It's utterly bleak.
The final paradox of this jet black film is that the one to which it owes it's greatest debt was in the end Kubrick's least disturbing, most gentle, most buoyant creation. In Barry Lyndon there's the occasional gentlemanly duel, the odd minor war injury, or the temporary pang of unrequited desire, but virtually no gore, menace, or mayhem. Woody's Match Point, however, is the most darkly chilling horror he has ever conjured. It's a shiver to the marrow that grows deeper and darker.