Match Point - Movie Review
Posted by Tara Tue, 31 Jan 2006 16:00:00 GMT
Woody Allen’s new movie Match Point is interesting, disturbing, and entertaining. Kevin has deemed it one of his favorite movies, which is even more interesting to me because his feelings about almost every movie we’ve seen together have ranged from mild disappointment to hatred. I can’t say I liked it as much as he did, but it was certainly thought provoking.
The most prominent theme in the movie is that luck is often more important than any talents, ambitions, or hard work a person has. This theme may be misleading…
An underlying theme is how perhaps a lack of character leads to the preeminence of luck/chance in one’s life. The main character starts the movie by answering questions about what he wants to do with his life with “I don’t know. Something big.” His “something big” turns out to be what others in society deem worthwhile (good job, rich friends, material wealth), while internally he struggles with the physical embodiment (Scarlett Johansson) of his own belief that this isn’t really what he wants. In the end, he symbollically kills this piece of himself. All the while, he is blessed with amazing strokes of luck that keep leading him down this path of societally-defined happiness. He struggles against it but eventually gives in. Was it really luck? Or simply an inability to chose the life he would have wanted if he had any character?
