Match Point
Movie gossip writer Peter Biskind described Woody Allen in the December 2005 Vanity Fair as “an artist without honor in his own country” (apparently Biskind’s ecstatic write-up in Vanity Fair doesn’t count). He went on to compare Allen’s fate to those of some of Allen’s heroes, including Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Orson Welles, and Charlie Chaplin (assuming Chaplin’s “own country” was the U.S.). He added that Allen, who’s released 35 features to date, has made at least ten masterpieces “that can hold their own against” any of the four he credited to Robert Altman or the three he assigned to Francois Truffaut.
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Still, I’ll concede that having so many features under his belt has taught Allen a thing or two. On the occasions when he manages to forget Bergman and Fellini–filmmakers whose main achievements, unlike his, depend on their original style–he shows a flair for some of the less reputable genres of Hollywood movie art, including romantic comedy (Annie Hall), crime and showbiz (Broadway Danny Rose), melodrama (Husbands and Wives), murder mystery (Manhattan Murder Mystery), musical comedy (Everyone Says I Love You), low-budget B-film (The Curse of the Jade Scorpion), and now, with Match Point, erotic crime thriller.
Despite its deft organization, Crimes and Misdemeanors still offends me. It exults in pretentious metaphors about sight, including a blind rabbi who’s more a walking postulate than a character. It laments cosmic injustice and glib self-interest even as it encourages audiences to chortle at a lonely and desperate woman’s description of being tied up and defecated on by a man she met through a classified ad. It’s so focused on the doctor’s alternating spells of guilt and remorselessness after the murder of his mistress that she never becomes anything more than a function of the dramaturgy.
