I was a bit anxious when I entered the movie theater. Match Point had been praised by everyone I met or heard, making me fear that it could not live up to the extraordinary expectations raised by all this praise. I was not disappointed. It was a very good movie and it was a movie that was different to other Woody Allen movies that I have seen. However, I did not feel it to be the best Woody Allen since Manhattan or something like that. It was different but not necessarily better that his other movies. I guess that most people find it so much better because it is not a movie that might be perceived as being shallow, being a romantic comedy mixed with a few grains of psychoanalysis and a hearty filling of Manhattan impressions. This movie has a much sterner approach to life. And it has a Dostoevsky-reading anti-hero, Opera, cold-blooded murder and an ambivalent ending. Obviously, this is a movie to be taken serious. Bring in the Oscars.
Ehem. Seems I got into a rant here. Well, you should watch this movie. It is good. It has Dostoevsky in it. Crime and Punishment – the hero feels he commits crimes (I think he does so from the beginning by straightly sneaking his way into High Society) and he seeks punishment that does not come easily. Grand. The women are beautiful. No surprise here. The script is excellent and to the point – perhaps a bit too much to the point: a bit less doodling around the theme of luck
and more scenes showing how difficult it would be to make your way into the English establishment as an Irish worker’s child would have been even more to my taste. Excellent acting, however. I am looking forward to Allen’s next movie which will supposedly also play in England.
IMDb entry | Trailer
Posts Tagged ‘Dostoevsky’
Match Point – Dostoevsky and class mobility.
Sunday, January 15th, 2006Closing book covers.
Friday, August 20th, 2004Ah well, summertime is reading time. Especially when you are travelling, and most particularly when you are on the deck of a ferry slowly shipping you from Frederikshavn to Oslo, and the weather is fine. Under these circumstances I was finally able to finish some readings which I have begun a significant amount of time ago.
Even before entering the ferry I was able to finish reading The Human Stain by Philip Roth. That was a good book, and, as everybody says, his language is well crafted. I might want to add to that this praise is especially justified because it is crafty without being overly concerned with displaying craftiness. Nonetheless, I wasn’t really gripped by this novel playing in a college setting. It seems I did not really connect to the characters in this book. Even though I do work in such a setting.
In contrast, I was gripped by several of the short stories in the collection of Dostoevsky‘s early stories which I read over the course of the last year or so. The story which I read on the ferry is called A Little Hero. It has a touching romantic ending, and it is both lighthearted and enlightening. A story of the first awakening of love in a boy’s heart.
After finishing this classic work, I embarked on making myself to the spoon – as we say in German. To the spoon? How? By reading the most recent pocket book by Max Goldt: Wenn man einen weißen Anzug anhat. People who know Max Goldt know that the spoonishness doesn’t stem from carrying around a book written by a bad author, instead the spoonishness manifests itself in spontaneous laughing attacks suffered by its readership – evoking raised eyebrows and whatnot in listening range of the poor reader a.k.a. spoon.
And now, I am reading Krokodil im Nacken by Klaus Kordon. A book about a man who wanted to flee from the German Democratic Republic with his family. Much of the story is set in East Berlin, which makes the book an interesting read for me. I will tell you more when I am done reading it (which might take a while, since it has almost 800 pages… ).