Match Point is a hauntingly familiar, contemporary story of a commonplace urban sociopath.
A friend of mine recently escaped from an abusive relationship. Throughout the entire time they were together, her boyfriend cheated, stole money, racked up debt — pretty much everything horrible that can happen between two people, barring physical abuse, happened to her. At the end, truths that had been accepted for years were revealed to be lies, without any sign of remorse or regret. As it turns out, honesty is simply not the way the guy operates — it's not in his vocabulary. And she's not the only one. Another friend is still visibly shaken recounting the months he spent with a partner who lived a secret double life, telling hundreds of compulsive lies, and in so doing, has subsequently shattered my friend's confidence in his own judgment. "How could I get involved with someone like this?" he says. "What does that say about me?" Yet another friend tells the story of her ex-roommate, a woman who supported a man for a year — gave him credits cards, paid the rent — only to learn he had been cheating on her for months. This information surfaced a week before the wedding, as explanation for why he was breaking it off. I'd like to think these stories are the exceptions, but I'm coming to accept that horrible people are everywhere, and that sociopathic behavior isn't as uncommon as I'd like to believe. So how does one protect themselves? My friends are all intelligent, thoughtful, successful people — but these "crazies," as we've come to call them, have spent their entire lives constructing elaborate facades. And so, it's a near impossible game, because lies are so seamlessly intermingled with truth — for in this type of mind, all that's important is number one, and whatever or whoever is in the way is irrelevant.
This behavior isn't often captured in a mature way on film — generally relationships-turned-wrong plots morph into a paint-by-numbers thriller or horror movies. But not so in the case of Woody Allen's new film, Match Point, where the psychology of a sociopath is more chillingly depicted and accurately observed than any other of recent memory. It may be true that Allen isn't as good as he used to be, but in the character of Chris Wilton, Jonathan Rhys Meyers has created a villain that many of us recognize as familiar: a man who deceives without guilt, whose only goal is reptilian self-promotion and self-preservation, a social climber, a liar and ultimately a murderer. It's a character type that rarely receives complex treatment (usually simply a cold-blooded killer to provide creepy thrills or screams) considering how many of them are lurking out there, and Rhys Meyers's portrayal of the inner, remorseless thinking of such a man is dead-on accurate, and is an eerily instructive, useful portrayal of this type of personality.
In fact, the movie is essentially a primer on the mannerisms and tricks of a liar. Consider a few key scenes. Early in the story, when Rhys Meyers spots Nola Rice (Scarlett Johansson) — the object of his obsession — in an art museum, he pursues her, explaining to his wife that he needs to make a call. Alone, he presses her to meet with him, but the wife catches them mid-conversation. In an instant, Rhys Meyers adapts, telling his wife that he just bumped into her. The quickness of the cut helps, but in the actor's body — his lightning pivot and change from familiar to formal — we see what he's doing. The lack of doubt as he goes from truth to fiction is not calculated or planned, but more an animal instinct: It doesn't even cross his conscience that he's doing something wrong. In a lesser actor, remorse might creep through, or even glee at getting away with a lie, but here, he plays as if truth itself can change depending on people in the room, that it's not an objective quality. Rhys Meyers understands the distinction: He's not "telling lies," per say, but rather he sincerely believes that things magically change when necessary for the benefit of a "special person."
Moments like this are flush throughout the movie, but it would be a mistake to say he's simply playing "coldness" — a character beat from a thousand run-of-the-mill WASP family melodramas or "charming guy turns out to be evil" potboilers. Instead, what Rhys Meyers does is far more interesting: He plays emptiness — a complete lack of morality — that infects this character's soul. In the best scene of the film, the victims of his triple murder — the lover, her child, and the landlady — confront him on a late, sleepless night, like Banquo's ghost in Macbeth, and ask him to explain his actions. Reflecting back on it, all he can say is that sometimes the innocent are harmed for a greater good, and so he deflects the responsibility from himself to a higher power that has predestined an important purpose for him. (We've learned throughout the film that he wants to "do great things" with his life but we never learn what these things might be. We assume that only means "great things for me.") Rhys Meyers delivers his justification without malice or cunning — it's just a fact to him, that those in his way deserve to be extinguished, for they impede the progress of his greatness. His face betrays no emotion or reflection (a withholding that's hard for most actors) but rather a calm authority, as if he's explaining to children some elementary concept. In this moment, we realize that uneasy impressions from earlier in the film were correct. For example, it always felt a little odd when Rhys Meyers would constantly insist that he pay his own way: You sensed that he was just trying to throw his new rich friends off the scent. Modesty and sheepishness were part of the same scheme — he was playing the "young upstart from the gutter," and he knew how that story would appeal to the noblesse oblige tendencies of the aristocracy.
But it is in this final moment that we realize that it was not intentional, not a master plan, but simply part of his nature, it was "predestined." His matter-of-factness brings the entire movie together to one central theme: That selfish people do not change, that the emotionless robots in the world will not and cannot feel guilt, and that they are designed that way from the beginning. In this, the movie explains all those inexplicable stories of the contemporary urban dating scene. It's not so much that people mean to harm others — it's not intentional — but they just can't help themselves. They have no conception of the outside world, it doesn't exist for them. And suddenly, I felt an even greater compassion for my injured friends. It would almost be better if someone plotted against you, but the truth is oddly both more benevolent, yet also somehow crueler: In the mind of the "crazies," you don't even really exist.
This notion of entitlement and God-granted superiority plays itself out in all the situations he faces. In two other scenes, facing more threatening situations, we see how this pathology manifests itself during times of stress. When he is almost caught by a snooping neighbor, Rhys Meyers cowers behind the door, glaring at the glass as if it's personally insulted him. Likewise, when questioned by the police, he pleads that it would be terribly unjust to ruin his family because of his affair. But in his eyes, you see what the character is thinking: It would be completely unjust for this to happen to me, because I am "better than this." Instead of fear or excitement, he plays these scenes with indignation, annoyed at being toyed with by insignificant creatures. This is an indignation that stems not simply from arrogance, but rather the idea of a "natural order" which shouldn't be disturbed. It reminded me of a story my recently single friend told me about her ex-boyfriend. At one point, she was confronting him about a debt he had incurred and his response was to slyly change the subject. Soon after in the course of conversation, he started bragging about an expensive new item he had recently acquired. Rhys Meyers captures this same bravado of detachment, and you realize that these people can lie just as easily about murder as they might about shopping: They have a right to it all. Much has been written about the film's exploration of "luck," but more important is the sociopath's relationship to it. When luck smiles, it's expected, for the narcissist deserves it by nature of his birth; something unfortunate, and it must be eliminated, not simply dealt with, in whatever fashion necessary.
In the end, Chris Wilton gets the life he wants, and probably won't think much about the crimes committed to get there. I suppose there should be some consolation that deep down, the sociopath is really a deeply unhappy person, and their interpersonal relationships will always be flawed. You sense that Chris Wilton probably won't have a very happy life, for without a conscience, or the ability to empathize or feel pain, the high points lose their meaning and resonance. You can imagine this character 30 years in the future, still playing some game, manipulating people to get the material things he thinks he wants, but never being truly satisfied. But when you're in the process of sifting through the lies — trying to figure out what emotions were real and which ones were faked, and what the agenda had been all along — it's a hypothetical band-aid on a very real cut. But then again, most people would rather live a life with cuts than a lie with none.
Getting Reel is a biweekly commentary about movies and the world.
