A timeless film and a near-masterpiece. A clever treatise on aristocracy and class. Gorgeous to look at with precise scenes and remarkable acting, it only dawns on you slowly that you are watching an udderly nihilistic film. Or is it? If a character accepts and engages in nihilism, but wants, at heart, to be proven wrong, does it redeem him? No, probably not. Nor does it assuage disgusted viewers who find this film misogynistic (I won’t argue that it isn’t). I have two minor complaints. One is that it treads awfully close at times to Allen’s previous masterpiece “Crimes and Misdemeanors” (one scene is almost verbatim), the other is involving dream sequence/soliloquy too late in the film. I feel that if that device is going to be used it needs to be throughout. Not that the story-as-opera isn’t evident from early on (reviewers who pooh-pooh the script just don’t get what is going on here.) Opera plays a big role and this is the closest Woody has come to full on opera since “Hannah and Her Sisters.” Going British is a nice twist, too, but there’s a direct link from Evelyn Waugh to the Marx Brothers, isn’t there?
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Welcome
Jordan Hoffman is a New York-based writer and film critic working for The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Thrillist, Times of Israel, NY Daily News and elsewhere.
He is the host of ENGAGE: The Official Star Trek Podcast, a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and challenges you to a game of backgammon.
I don’t pretend to know anything about movies – you’re the expert – but I have two questions with regard to your second complaint about the dream sequence towards the end of the movie:
1 – I seem to remember you heaping praise upon Scorsese for introducing Karen’s voice over halfway through Goodfellas. Am I right?
2 – How else would you have introduced the idea that he wants to be found out? It would have been completely out of character for him to confide in another character, walk into a church and confess, visit her grave, etc.
A fair question. I think my prob with it was that EVERYTHING else in the movie was hardcore realism. With something like GoodFellas there is all sorts of wacky flashforwards and freezeframes and what-have-you — so all bets are off formally in that movie and that is pretty much set up from the get go.
This wasn’t a MAJOR problem with Match Point for me — just a mainor gripe. Match Point is still very much in my thoughts days later — I can’t stop thinking about it, and probably ought to upgrade it from the A- to the A.