life on earth

Match Point

W O O D Y A L L E N ( D I R E C T O R A N D S C R E E N W R I T E R )

Film, 2005. Summary.

The film Match Point, a term borrowed from tennis, where it indicates the point at which a game might end, is primarily about luck. To be sure, Lady Luck was not one of Kant’s primary interests, but the main character in Match Point, Chris Wilton, epitomizes what Kant thought was wrong about lying: He lies to save his own hide, even if he knows that what he is doing is wrong. This is, in essence, a basic story about someone who lies to get out of trouble and lives with one idea in mind: to look out for number one. So this film might also be used in Chapter 4 to illustrate fundamental selfishness. And I need to issue a “spoiler alert” at this point: I will be revealing elements of the ending in this summary. The film opens, in Chris’s voice, with the following message, and with an image of a tennis ball teetering on the top of the net:

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 outside 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.

We’ll see a similar image much later in the film, and we’ll get the meaning.

Chris is a British former tennis champion who is now a tennis coach at a fancy London club. He comes from a working-class background and has ambitions to do something good, to make a difference, but above all to leave his modest background behind and work his way out of poverty. One of Chris’s clients is young, wealthy Tom Hewett, and they soon strike up a friendship, sharing a love for tennis and for the opera. Chris is invited to the opera and meets Tom’s family, including his sister Chloe. Friendship develops rapidly, and Chris is invited to the family’s country estate that same weekend. Feelings are already developing between him and Chloe, but it is obvious that Chloe is more in love with him than he is with her. As luck will have it, one of the other weekend guests is a young, sassy, sexy woman from America, Nola Rice. When Chris encounters her, sparks immediately fly In the film Match Point (DreamWorks, 2005) young, ambitious former tennis pro, Chris ( Jonathan

Rhys Meyers, left) wants to marry into a rich and powerful family, but he falls in love with Nola (Scarlett Johansson), the fiancée of his girlfriend’s brother (Matthew Goode). Here Chris meets Nola for the first time. Since he is not about to give up on either his wealthy girlfriend Chloe or beautiful Nola, he marries Chloe and entangles himself in a web of lies so he can keep dating Nola.

Eventually he starts lying to Nola, too. between them. (Chris reveals himself to be something of a cad already at this point.) But

Tom arrives and introduces Nola, an actress from Colorado, as his fiancée.

Chloe asks her father to find Chris a job in the family business, and he does, seeing in Chris a future son-in-law. Chloe’s mother is disturbed by Chris’s lack of breeding and is downright opposed to Nola coming into the family, but the father shows more understanding, seeing the potential for happiness as well as for good business. The two couples start double-dating, but soon Chris doesn’t want to do anything with Chloe unless Nola and Tom are there too. At one of their dinners Chris expresses his philosophy: Life has no purpose, no design; life is on this planet by chance, and luck is the only thing he believes in. Chloe, on the other hand, believes in hard work.

A chance meeting between Chris and Nola—she is on her way to an audition— develops into a confidential talk, and it is obvious that Chris is extremely attracted to

Nola. During a weekend at the Hewitt estate, Tom and Chloe’s mother starts ragging on Nola for wanting to be an actress. Nola bolts from the living room out into the garden in the rain, and Chris follows her in sympathy. Sympathy turns to passion, and they make love in the field of grain.

After that incident, Nola is distant—she regrets what she has done, and focuses on the fact that they are about to become brother- and sister-in-law. Chris’s ambitions are about to be realized—he and Chloe do get married, and Hewitt finds them a spectacular apartment with a view of the River Thames and the houses of Parliament. Chloe wants to become pregnant as soon as possible, which puts a strain on their sex life, and Chris starts dreaming about Nola—Tom has broken up with her and is dating someone else.

And Nola has disappeared. Months later, Chloe is still not pregnant, and Chris runs into Nola at the Tate Modern art gallery. At the first opportunity, he goes to her apartment, where they resume their brief affair. From now on Chris sees Nola as often as he can—during lunch breaks, after meetings, before work, after work—and lies to Chloe about where he has been.

When a friend shows up and catches Chris in a lie, he begins to realize that the situation is getting complicated. Chloe suspects nothing yet, but is upset that he is absent so much.

Nola is getting upset that he still hasn’t told Chloe that he is leaving her—and, of course, we know that he has no intention of doing so; his life with a fancy job and a fancy apartment is much too attractive for him to divorce his wife for Nola.

But now Nola gets pregnant, and life becomes hell for Chris, because she demands that he tell his wife; if he doesn’t, Nola will: Chris begins to lie not only to his wife but also to his lover: He claims that he will tell his wife and get a divorce, but he has no intention of leaving the upscale life he has gotten used to. But Chloe is beginning to suspect that he is having an affair. She asks him, “Don’t you love me anymore?” and with a hint of veracity, he says to her, “I feel so guilty.” She thinks he feels guilty because she isn’t pregnant yet, but we, the audience, know that even if he feels guilty, he has no intention of doing the right thing. And that is precisely what Nola wants him to do—the “right thing.” For her, it would mean leaving his wife, marrying her, and raising their child together. (She has no intention of getting an abortion—she has already had two.)

When he tells her he is going away to Greece with his wife and her family but she catches him in town, things come to a head. Screaming “Liar!” at him, she makes a scene outside his workplace. He manages to put her in a cab and take her home, where she threatens to tell Chloe. Chris promises Nola that now he’ll do the right thing.

The “right thing” turns out to mean something quite different for Chris than for

Nola: He goes into his father-in-law’s gun collection, steals a shotgun with shells, and puts it in his tennis bag. He arranges with Chloe to meet her that evening to attend a musical (which he hates), then calls Nola to tell her he has good news and will come by after work. With the shotgun in his tennis bag, he goes to Nola’s apartment building before she returns from work: Under the pretext of checking her television, he persuades

Nola’s elderly neighbor Mrs. Eastby to let him in, and the old lady suspects no foul play until he turns the shotgun on her and shoots her down. Then he ransacks the apartment and takes her medication and jewelry, making it look like a drug-related robbery. His nerves are about to fail him, but he keeps going. He waits for Nola on the landing. When she steps out of the elevator, he shoots and kills her at point-blank range, and leaves as fast as he can, going straight to the musical with Chloe. Sure enough, next day the newspapers are full of the story of the double murder. The police theorize that it was a drug-related robbery gone bad and that Nola must have just gotten in the way.

Chris manages to put the shotgun back and dispose of the shells, and he throws the jewelry and the medication into the river. For one moment the camera follows one item,

Mrs. Eastby’s ring, which doesn’t fall into the river but instead teeters on the top of the fence, like a tennis ball . . . Luck is about to happen. But is it good or bad luck? After finding Nola’s diary, the police question Chris, who tells the officers that “it might not be the most honorable thing to cheat on your wife, but that doesn’t make me a murderer.”

He begs them not to tell his in-laws, and they seem sympathetic, but the detective has a hunch—that Chris is the murderer. I will leave the final wrap-up for you to experience for yourself: Will Chloe get pregnant? Will there be any justice for Nola and Mrs. Eastby? Will Chris have to pay for his crimes and his selfishness? Which way will the irony cut?

Study Questions

1. Is this a realistic film? Is it a tragedy? Is it a comedy? What is the “moral of this story”?

2. What would Kant say is wrong with Chris’s choice of actions? Would the filmmaker,

Woody Allen (who wrote and directed the movie), agree? Why or why not?

3. What, in your opinion, would have been “the right thing” for Chris to do? Would it depend on the outcome? Explain why or why not.

4. Is there such a thing as a justifiable lie? Might such a question apply to Chris? Explain.

5. If one doesn’t think there is a higher power, and one believes that life on earth is here by accident, does that mean one has no moral obligations—that anything is permitted?

Explain.