Matchpoint
"The man who said 'I'd rather be lucky than good' saw deeply into life. People are afraid to face how great a part of life is dependent on luck. It's scary to think so much is out of one's control. There are moments in a match when the ball hits the top of the net, and for a split second it can either go forward or fall back. With a little luck, it goes forward and you win…or maybe it doesn't, and you lose."
The opening of Matchpoint zooms in on a tennis ball flying across the court before choosing the preferred side to land on, and then, as if having second and third thoughts, tipping just hesitantly over the net, without showing the players at all, probably to emphasise how little impact people have on the outcome, and when, and where, it matters most. The omniscient narrator was privileged to witness and tell it as he sees fit, but really, what does he know, as we would question, as the crepe-thin plot unfolds, critically thickened only by the meta-themes that I suspect the director has unwittingly stirred in. But these only serve, in a most delightfully performative and ironic way, to highlight the contingent intrigue that is by chance and by luck, nothing to do with skillful directing and scripting.
(Aside: scripting of luck is already as oxymoronic as one can get. But what underpins Matchpoint as a meta-narrative triumph is also it being the lucky recipient of Oscar nods and the equivalent accolades for something that is so surprisingly underwhelming. I don’t get why it is exalted, so I attribute it all to luck)
The premise is comfortingly (not deceptively, never) simple. Poor boy makes it good by cultivating a love match with a rich girl. Love is not Love enough and he falls head over heels for an actress. He wooed her frantically and aggressively. She rejects sincerely and seriously. Then circumstances threw them in compromising togetherness and she succumbs unwillingly to his advances and makes clear it’s only a one-time occurrence. And she leaves. And then years later, they meet again by chance in an art gallery. This time, she submits completely and they, equally smitten with each other, begin a torrid affair. Subsequently, she gets pregnant and wants him to leave rich girl wife. He kills her, and was never found out, thanks to a series of very helpful happenings in his favour.
The material is wielded pretty heavy-handedly. Conversations baldly discussing luck and hard work are aplenty. Characters themselves are walking advertisements epitomising a spectrum of luck and the sadly deluded hard work that never gets one anywhere, least of all where you do want to be. Poor boy is the tennis coach (Stop hitting me with the tennie ball metaphor!!! I so get it!!), infinitely lucky and the one on a winning streak. Actress is the one with the streak of bad luck trailing. She is obviously attractive and talented, alluring so, but can never nail down an audition and get cast, despite always trying. It is always nerves, always bad luck. She was wiped out of luck completely, eventually, as she got unceremoniously dumped by her fiancé and then killed quietly and successfully by her lover. Rich girl believes in hard work, but the audience never sees her working hard for anything (apart from tediously laughable efforts to be impregnated) credible or believable. She is naturally pretty and rich and happy and nice to begin with, which makes her character one-dimensional and one that significantly refutes the importance of hard work, simply because the cloistered character is so well-buffered from the vicissitudes of life.
And of course, there’s that Crime and Punishment shot and that of its companion, that is, the guide book to this sprawling text. I’m reeling from the moral pounding and feeling more guilty than lucky, especially since I’ve remained valiantly unimpressed. Well maybe, there's a part two to Matchpoint, presuming it wants to go the way of of the Russian epic. Matchpoint comes across as curiously unfinished, like a tennis match frozen with the ball still in mid-air, unable to land, unable to end. Did creative juices run dry; did the Luck with scripting of luck simply run out and we are left simply, with less, because no one believes in Hard Work?
So what is unwittingly stirred in? Fate and Self-Knowledge as the overarching meta-themes supplanting Luck & Hard Work, is what. Go figure. My problem: is acknowledging (or even acceding to) Fate playing the all important hand in life, does this admission of knowing, this knowledge of the potentially helpless self, come across as empowering? Even if you can’t do anything to navigate and negate the forces, does the knowing put you one up against Fate?
The opening of Matchpoint zooms in on a tennis ball flying across the court before choosing the preferred side to land on, and then, as if having second and third thoughts, tipping just hesitantly over the net, without showing the players at all, probably to emphasise how little impact people have on the outcome, and when, and where, it matters most. The omniscient narrator was privileged to witness and tell it as he sees fit, but really, what does he know, as we would question, as the crepe-thin plot unfolds, critically thickened only by the meta-themes that I suspect the director has unwittingly stirred in. But these only serve, in a most delightfully performative and ironic way, to highlight the contingent intrigue that is by chance and by luck, nothing to do with skillful directing and scripting.
(Aside: scripting of luck is already as oxymoronic as one can get. But what underpins Matchpoint as a meta-narrative triumph is also it being the lucky recipient of Oscar nods and the equivalent accolades for something that is so surprisingly underwhelming. I don’t get why it is exalted, so I attribute it all to luck)
The premise is comfortingly (not deceptively, never) simple. Poor boy makes it good by cultivating a love match with a rich girl. Love is not Love enough and he falls head over heels for an actress. He wooed her frantically and aggressively. She rejects sincerely and seriously. Then circumstances threw them in compromising togetherness and she succumbs unwillingly to his advances and makes clear it’s only a one-time occurrence. And she leaves. And then years later, they meet again by chance in an art gallery. This time, she submits completely and they, equally smitten with each other, begin a torrid affair. Subsequently, she gets pregnant and wants him to leave rich girl wife. He kills her, and was never found out, thanks to a series of very helpful happenings in his favour.
The material is wielded pretty heavy-handedly. Conversations baldly discussing luck and hard work are aplenty. Characters themselves are walking advertisements epitomising a spectrum of luck and the sadly deluded hard work that never gets one anywhere, least of all where you do want to be. Poor boy is the tennis coach (Stop hitting me with the tennie ball metaphor!!! I so get it!!), infinitely lucky and the one on a winning streak. Actress is the one with the streak of bad luck trailing. She is obviously attractive and talented, alluring so, but can never nail down an audition and get cast, despite always trying. It is always nerves, always bad luck. She was wiped out of luck completely, eventually, as she got unceremoniously dumped by her fiancé and then killed quietly and successfully by her lover. Rich girl believes in hard work, but the audience never sees her working hard for anything (apart from tediously laughable efforts to be impregnated) credible or believable. She is naturally pretty and rich and happy and nice to begin with, which makes her character one-dimensional and one that significantly refutes the importance of hard work, simply because the cloistered character is so well-buffered from the vicissitudes of life.
And of course, there’s that Crime and Punishment shot and that of its companion, that is, the guide book to this sprawling text. I’m reeling from the moral pounding and feeling more guilty than lucky, especially since I’ve remained valiantly unimpressed. Well maybe, there's a part two to Matchpoint, presuming it wants to go the way of of the Russian epic. Matchpoint comes across as curiously unfinished, like a tennis match frozen with the ball still in mid-air, unable to land, unable to end. Did creative juices run dry; did the Luck with scripting of luck simply run out and we are left simply, with less, because no one believes in Hard Work?
So what is unwittingly stirred in? Fate and Self-Knowledge as the overarching meta-themes supplanting Luck & Hard Work, is what. Go figure. My problem: is acknowledging (or even acceding to) Fate playing the all important hand in life, does this admission of knowing, this knowledge of the potentially helpless self, come across as empowering? Even if you can’t do anything to navigate and negate the forces, does the knowing put you one up against Fate?
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