This total externality is fatal to the concept. The movie opens with Judah receiving an award for philanthropy which tells us that he is a good man—Allen is taking an extreme case, and saying even a good man could kill and suffer no qualms and endure no punishment. It probably doesn't need to be said, however, that a man who kills his inconvenient ex-girlfriend is by definition not good. That would make him a sociopath, even if a theretofore-undetectable sociopath, and Allen's demonstration of his adolescent moral pessimism simply doesn't have the imaginative reach to convey psychological chaos of that kind convincingly. And as for the externals, Allen doesn't dramatize the story enough to give weight to Judah's fear of Miriam's reaction to his adultery. If we saw how his marriage, along with his fear of complications and exposure, pushed a cowardly, self-indulgent man in the direction of murder, then Landau might have been able to give us a clammily intimate portrait of a fractured personality. As is, he's just not believable as a murderer—he doesn't have a dark side to go over to. (If only he had Orbach's secret-keeping eyes.)
Allen fails because his writing lacks the complexity to show us how it would actually work to commit murder and not feel guilty about it—what would have to be brought forward in the personality and what would have to be suppressed. Judah pleads anxiously for Dolores to be reasonable before the crime and is nearly hysterical afterwards, so when he shows up in the last scene and says (indirectly) that he doesn't feel bad about murdering her, it's as if an entirely new character had shown up—the key development in his character has been elided. As a result, in the "crimes" section of the movie, Allen starts with a sketchy premise and after working it through for 107 minutes he still has no more than the premise he started with.
The Lester half of the movie is a trickier kind of botch. Allen acknowledges that what Lester gets away with is not a crime, but though he presents his own character Cliff as petty, envious, and self-deluded, he still expects us to see Lester as Cliff sees him, i.e., as walking proof of the unfairness of life—phonies get the money, the attention, the praise, the girls. Some of what Allen tots up as Lester's misdemeanors, (e.g., coming on to sexy women in corners when he thinks nobody's looking), however, suggest that Allen is not as self-aware as he thinks. After all, Allen's demonstration of the unfairness of Lester's success is crowned by his winning Halley, who is played by Allen's own luminous goyish girlfriend at the time. What on earth is he whining about? Producing cheesy sit-coms, being pompous, and scoring with bimbos may perhaps reveal a propensity to vice but aren't in themselves as much as misdemeanors.
Article comments
1 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
ENOUGH ALREADY!! Who would have thought that a poor putz who wrote comedy sketches for Sid Caesar a half century ago and did stand-up comedy in the Village FOUR decades ago would get reviews SOOO long? Did Allen die? Were you writing a eulogy, maybe?
Honey! Get me the Tylenol! PLEASE!
2 - Alan Dale
Presumably if Allen had died he'd have stopped making and releasing movies, though you can never be sure.
3 - Andy Marsh
the planet would be a better place if this child molestor had died!
4 - Penny Woods
What's wrong with the long review? I thought it did justice to how bad Match Point was.
5 - Alan Dale
Thanks, Penny, for the back-up. In fact, the review covers four WA movies, so its length is that much more justifiable. (The fact that WA has been working for half a century, as Ruvy points out, is only more reason a review of his work would be longer--there's more work to talk about.)
The question of length comes up for me on Blogcritics periodically, so let me lay out my defenses of the in-depth reviews I post here:
1) some people actually like the fuller discussion possible only by writing more;
2) while the average reader may want no more than short-form consumer advice about what to see this weekend (i.e., thumbs-up/thumbs-down), I'm not writing for the average reader;
3) there's no particular reason any individual reader's attention span should set a limit on the length of movie criticism--i.e., you can stop reading at will, it's a review not homework;
4) this isn't a market so readers can't bring economic pressure to bear on me and thus don't have the complaining rights that a paying readership would; and
5) there's not limited space on Blogcritics as opposed to a print or online magazine, so I'm not squeezing anyone else by writing longer pieces.
6 - Rodney Welch
On the other hand, the enormous length of a review may indicate that the writer is simply long-winded, has no particular talent for persuasion, cogency or boiling an argument or point of view down to its essence, or has simply never heeded the advice "If you can say it in fewer words, you probably should."
7 - Alan Dale
This comment addresses personality rather than principles--it's inherently subjective. "Long-winded" doesn't decide anything; it's just another way of saying you personally think the review sucks. As for heeding advice, what's the difference between "talent for persuasion" and "cogency" (Chambers dictionary defines the latter as "convincing power")?
8 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Alan, this is going to sound terribly selfish and self-centered.
Allen Koenigsberg is the most famous graduate of Midwood High School (so far, anyway), and a fellow alumnus. I can't admire how this man has lived his life. I'd LIKE to admire his art. But you have tken a long time to say it isn't worth admiring.
Your article may be cogent and display immense talent for persuasion, even if it is a TAD long. But I'm disappointed. Not davka, with you, but with yet another possible hero with feet of clay...
9 - Alan Dale
Hey Ruvy,
I'm not judging WA the man--with the possible exception of his making a second movie about killing an ex-girlfriend, in which the man inevitably crosses the boundary from life into art. And I am not at all saying that his art is worthless. Apparently the review was long enough that the first paragraph hasn't lingered in your mind! In the '70s WA was a hero of mine, my family's, and friends', entirely for aesthetic reasons--we loved his early comedies, we read his books out loud on car trips, and, as I hoped to make clear, I think that The Purple Rose of Cairo, Bullets Over Broadway, and Sweet and Lowdown are classics. By his own admisson he's not an intellectual or a great director. Unfortunately his ambitions lie in areas that require more talent of a certain sort than he's blessed with. That still leaves him with an impressive legacy. (If you rewatched his movies in reverse order you'd probably feel better about his career.) So take heart--one foot of clay, at most. Maybe only four toes.
Thanks for writing.
10 - V
I can't help but be reminded Woody's commentary on that idiot's pretentious rambling in Annie Hall...
"You know nothing of my work...how you got to teach a class in anything is beyond me!!"