Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a look at Woody Allen's MATCH POINT. When I saw the trailer to this flick I was really shocked to see "A Film By Woody Allen" tacked onto the end. It doesn't look or feel like a Woody Allen flick. I hear this is the best film Allen has made in decades and this review from our new spy Ishmael only supports the word from my critic friends. I see this sucker next week myself. Can't wait! Here's Ishmael!
Dear Quint,
I attended a screening of Match Point on Monday and wanted to send in my two cents. Two weeks ago I saw a screening of Kong, but figured, why write it up? It's amazing and everyone will see it anyway. With Match Point, however, you've got problems: you've got people saying that Woody Allen hasn't made a good film since Crimes and Misdemeanors, you've got people saying that every Allen film is the same, and you've got people complaining that Allen is a pedophile who should not be supported in any way.
Match Point is an almost great movie that deserves to be seen, but before I say why, let me tackle these issues in order.
1. What is the worst Woody Allen film? "Curse of the Jade Scorpion." And yet, I ask you which you'd rather do: watch that, or watch the trailer for "Yours, Mine, and Ours." I saw that trailer at a theater recently and the guy in front of me said: "I would rather piss myself and sit in my own piss for five hours than watch that movie." Exactly. And Jade Scorpion still has some moments; I mean, how can you not laugh at the idea of Charlize Theron seducing Woody Allen? Woody at his worst is better than most movies at their best, and "Match Point" is Woody at his best.
2. "Match Point" is not typical Allen. It's in London, not New York, and by the way it captures and lampoons the British character so brilliantly you'd think Woody was British. I loved the scene where a bunch of upper-class Brits are in a restaurant ordering food: "baked potato with truffles, yum yum." It's better than it sounds, trust me. And where are the neurotic liberal intellectuals? Nowhere to be seen, though someone at the screening suggested that the movie is so intense that the audience becomes the neurotic character.
3. You can't throw out art because you have moral issues with its creator. I'm a musician, and if no one listened to music by "bad" people, there would be no music: Schubert molested boys and died as a result; Gesualdo was a murderer; Brahms insulted everyone he knew; Wagner was a lying, cheating, stealing adulterer and anti-Semite who inspired Nazis. In each case, as with Woody Allen and Roman Polanski, one must weigh the enormous merit of their art against the effects of their wrongdoing. Even outside of art I can respect people who hate Clinton for bombing an aspirin factory in Sudan, but anyone who hates Clinton just for getting his cock sucked has my hatred too.
Back to "Match Point"
what makes this movie so special is that Woody Allen is one of the last directors who "gets" the idea of glamour in the movies. Wong Kar Wai gets it in 2046, Scorsese gets in The Aviator, but the trend these days is for beautiful actresses to play obese lesbian paraplegic truckdrivers in order to prove that they can Act. With one sultry look at the camera in this movie, Scarlett Johansson can act the pants off any other actress out there (and that's something I'd pay to see).
But it's not just her; it's the way Allen shows her. His camera doesn't so much love her as want to commit obscene acts of filmic love to her. From her entrance, where we hear her off-camera asking who her next victim will be, to her final trivial conversation about a CD player, she oozes sensuality, sexuality, glamour, and beauty in this film more than any actress in any film this year.
Her opposite number, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, is a guy who makes a straight guy question his sexuality. He's not ruggedly handsome like Viggo or cute like Orlando; he's not the sort of guy about whom you'd say, "Yeah, I guess I see why girls like him, lucky bastard." JRM is actually beautiful, like a woman, or like a guy in a Gucci advertisement. He has to be, to be believable as a guy who seduces Scarlett Johansson.
MINOR SPOILERS
A plot summary is not really necessary, because "Match Point" covers much of the same tonal and dramatic territory as "Crimes and Misdemeanors." Allen can be fairly criticized for making his best movie since "Crimes and Misdemeanors" almost as a remake of that masterpiece, but if you look at "Match Point" carefully, there are differences. Martin Landau's Judah Rosenthal, an older, established, upper class American Jewish doctor, is a world apart from Jonathan Rhys Meyers' Chris Wilton, a young, poor, handsome tennis pro.
I shouldn't give anything away, but the difference between these two characters means that while the earlier film was dark and cynical, "Match Point" takes those qualities to such an extreme you may leave the theater thinking the whole human race is worthless.
I hate to end a review on that note, since it probably scares most people away. Some movies require a leap of faith; Kong doesn't, this one does. Please trust that it will be good, see it, and remember Ebert's quote that "no good movie is depressing; all bad movies are depressing."
Allen captures the beauty and explosive sexual chemistry of his two leads, the glory and harsh cruelty of modern London, and the worst elements of the human character with mostly brilliant writing (Scarlett does deliver a few clinkers), his best plot in ages, and an extraordinary visual style containing stunning shots like the ring hitting the fence near the film's end. The film deals with the disturbing issue that it's more important to be lucky than good. Anyone who can catch this movie is lucky, and no one who sees it can walk away unaffected.
If you use this, call me Ishmael.
