Philosophical Burogu

Matchstick Men Spoiler

Fortunately I did not know that the film's director was Ridely Scott (a genius) so I was watching without knowing what to expect. Okay so this is a con-film, possibly the earliest genre of BuddhaMovie, and true to the genre, I expected a twist. I thought that the twist was just going to involve Frankie's double dealings and, thanks to the intervention of Angela, we were going to be left with some polly-anna, silver moon thing and actually, it was a little like that.

But also I was taken in. And yes I admit it, I wept. I wept when, after an arguement, Angela, refused to get out of daddy's car. I wept at the thought of a little girl losing her father againg, and just at Alison "I can cry on cue" Lohman's pretty tears.

But it all turns out to be a big con. I did not expect such visciousness in Hollywood. After building up our hopes for patrifillial bliss, the prodgigal daughter, Angela turns out to have been an actress employed by Frankie in order to fleece Roy.

In an epilogue we see her has her real-self, looking closer to her real age, buying a carpet from Roy, who has ended up a carpet salesman. When she asks if Roy wants to know her real name, he replies that he already knows. She calls him "daddy," and drives off in her boyfriends car. For a higher Satori-ranking, should the film have ended there, in the carpet remnants shop of mediocraty?

Okay, sad for the squeamish, we get a little Hollywood treat at the end. We get see Roy go back to his immense while detached home (why Frankied did not screw him for the deeds, I am not sure) with its swimming pool and there Roy's new, pregnant wife. Happily Ever After?

The actress Alison Lohman cries, in real life, when she wants to get let off a parking ticket apparently. She is a good actress. But it is not really her acting that pulls it off. It is more the combined weight of our desires, to believe in children's tears and fairytales of long lost loving daughter, and the fact that Hollywood usually panders to them.

While it made sense, there was nothing particularly slick about this con film. If the film acheinves, and messes with, the suspension of disbelief, it does so because we want to believe in it, we "want to give our money away". What is Alison when we see her again at the end of the film? Both the audience and Roy is not sure how to treat her. Should Roy punch her lights out? Do we want to know who she really was? What was she till then? It is This is the story of a neurotic con-man called Roy, played by Nicolas Cage, and his parter Frankie, played by an ever-effervescent Sam Rockwell. The film starts with paranoid, twitching Roy, fleecing an old couple because, according to Roy, they "want to give their money away". The film charts the way Roy changes when his daughter Angela comes back into his life. Angela is played by the talented Alison Lohman. kind of a confusing moment. But I found Roy's choice kind of inevitable and comforting. He starts playing the daddy again - "Hey, so do you like this guy then?" He asks about her boyfriend. We are back here again, believing in Hollywood, because it more comfortable that way. We could have watched angela's car roll of into the sunset, fade to grey.

Did Ridely Scott want to end the film there? I don't think so. This is mahayana Buddhism at its best. Or the film can also been seen as a successful psychotherapy. Paranoid Roy is thick with phobia's ticks and twitches. Their origin is hinted as being in his rejection of fatherhood. Roy has thrown Angela's mother out of the house when she is two months pregnant. But by the end of the film, he has come to terms with his fear and inadequacy and, embraced reality by selling carpets and bringing up bratts. Wifey waits with good home cooking, bun in the oven and flowers on the table. Perhaps life is as simple as this? Perhaps if we can give up on our "con artistry," it can be?

Matchstick Men darker and more realistic than that. As Roy explains as carpet salesman, he feels differently now. He realises that he too wants to give his money away. In Roy's final choice of fantasy, indeed, Matchstick men is way up there (past Solaris) in getting to the shocking truth of the human condition - we prefer the bullshit. This is a film that speaks deeply about our desire to be in fantasyland, and it is clear that Sir. Ridely Scott is a lot more enlightened than I.