Matchpoint

Tonight I was watching this film, but only part. In fact, it troubles me too much to watch the entire thing. I'd seen it before and knew where all was going. A sense I did not possess upon first viewing.

The film bears too many resonances for comfort. Confusion between love and lust--the dimensions of love. Infidelity. Inability to take responsibility for one's actions. The most loathsome inclination towards material comforts. And the blackest, most abysmal guilt.

The only feeling familiar to me presently, is the force of material comforts. But I have been driven away from the doubts that plagued me so, for nearly a month or longer. And even I cannot admit to the material comforts that Chris, played by Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, enjoys. But my life is very plain, and so even modest comforts mean something to me. I'm happy simply to enjoy wealth or to be with those who do,
rather than to have it to myself. I live from paycheck to paycheck, and I suspect I always will.

Chris' guilt afflicts him prior to the murder he commits (and afterwards, for a while). And that's the only guilt I know. I've dreamt of murder--in fact quite frequently--but its purpose is to saddle me with something I can never overcome. Hence how I recoil from the climax of the film. And Chris takes on a double murder. Not merely the murder of a woman that he loves, on some level, but also of a child that is his.

It would be well to dismiss the confusion he has in love as an ethical lapse. Akrasia. Knowing and desiring the good but without pursuing it. Yet the good is
too complicated by all of the forces which compose it. Of course, explanations are made in this way to legitimate failure (as much as they are made to justify judgment).

Chris is frustrated by the double life he chooses and the decision it ultimately forces him to make. Voltaire is said to write somewhere that indecision inevitable decides itself. This blog presents a similar anxiety for me. I'd taken pleasure, in its conception, in the notion of regaling my readers with the more sinister exploits. But in writing a first post on adultery, or rather infidelity, I found myself struck by how evil the enterprise was and the effects this form of catharsis might produce. And thus silenced, for several days (not to mention all of the occupations interceding). With reflection on this film I find a potential middle way, where I restrain the glory I feel in recounting the stories, and focus on the emotional affects most concerning me.

You see, in fact, I am not Sade. I suppose that is laughable. Transgression by
itself provides me with no pleasure. Or at least, not principally. Yet I am a sadist in the desire to flaunt power. Glory in infidelity has no greater function than to pacify the insecurities of the ego, of the man who never thought himself enough to draw a woman to him--such that he would never be convinced those he did draw were good enough. I know that's not true, but I am having a hard time convincing the desiring part. As we know, everything depends upon the maintenance of desire. Notions of will are for self-haters. My quondam Christianity makes me a self-hater, but only as a result of this tradition that we all share.