Match Point

Woody Allen is a great writer and a great New Yorker and this movie is the proof of it. He has put together a film with various levels of meaning, driven mostly by his sexist humor and his intellectual esprit. The movie opens with a tennis ball hitting the top of a net and the voice of the main character that states “for a split second it can either go forward or fall back”. This is the key image to the, we want to say higher meaning of the movie?, which automatically serves Chris Wilton’s the philosophical view :“I’d rather be lucky than good”. Luck and goodness are therefore used in the entire movie as a dualism that seems to be always in front of Chris’ destiny. Should he take the boring-wealthy job his filthy rich girlfriend offers him (good), or should he fall in the joyful and sexy unknown (luck)? In order to answer this question the viewer is forced to keep in mind all the stereotypes of the British society (the movie is set between London), which found the backbone of the movie. The side characters, the English “haut bourgeoisie”, remind the viewer of a sketch stolen from a late nineteenth century drawing room comedy; they drink champagne, eat caviar and most importantly they make nasty remarks, that show their fascinating snobbish mentality. As a matter of fact, the two main characters, Chris and Nola are the only ones who don’t belong to that upper class, but nonetheless they strive to arrive there. They are the refreshed social climbers who would do anything.
Yet there is a burden for both of them that slows down their climb, that is each other, in view of the fact that obviously they have an affair that ends up with Nola being knocked up and threatening to tell the main character’s wife with this “beautiful” announcement. At this point Chris sees crumbling in front of his eyes what he has achieved: his success, his house, the respect of the family entered by marrying the sweet, but dumb, rich girl and not last his personal driver. Thus he has to choose the woman who he wants to stay with. On the one hand there is Chloe that represent control over life, stability and certainty, on the other there is the very lustful loser Nola who stands for unpredictability and precariousness.
Till here it is a quite ordinary story, however the plot evolves in a way the viewer wouldn’t expect. Even though “Crime and Punishment” is often cited during the film, there is nothing more divergent from the book. Indeed at this point Chris should feel guilty because he literally fucks up the whole situation, but he doesn’t at all, on the contrary he feels like the victim of the awful prank “luck” has played on him (just think of the irony about the pregnancy of Nola caused by one unprotected sex and the never ending failed attempts of the wife to be pregnant), he feels betrayed by it so he wants to be great in resolving it on his own. For this reason he decides to kill Nola.
After the killing he sees the Begermanian phantom of Nola that reminds him he will be caught because he made too many mistakes. To that statement Chris replies with the best lines of the entire movie “When the time came, I could pull the trigger. You can push the guilt under the rug and go on, you have to, or else it overwhelms you”. “It would be fitting if I were unpunished, at least there would be a small sign of justice, some small measure of hope for a possibility of meaning”. The Justice would represent the reward of his believing in luck.
In the end we see him throwing a ring that hits a banister and doesn’t fall where he wanted it to go. This will at the end save him because the ring will be taken by a hobo, who will be convicted of the murder.