The Music of Chance

Before I started on The Music of Chance, I knew it would not be the kind of film that explains itself. Since it is based on a novel by Paul Auster, there was a good chance that one would be left looking like a big question mark after seeing it. That prediction turned out to be correct.

The otherwise so dapper James Spader plays a seedy professional gambler, Jack Pozzi, who plans to clean out a couple of rich men good and proper. He has no money, however. In fact, he has just been beaten up when he is picked up by Mandy Patinkin, James Nashe, who is travelling around the USA in his car, burning through an inheritance. Once Pozzi has convinced James that he is a God-given poker player, they strike a deal. James lends Pozzi the 10,000 needed, and the two will split the winnings down the middle.

At the home of the eccentric rich men Willy Stone and Bill Flower, however, things do not go quite as Jack Pozzi had calculated. When the game is over, James and Jack are in debt to Stone and Flower, who insist that their guests work off the debt by building a wall somewhere on their large estate. Here the film turns, and its humorous tone is gradually replaced by an unpleasant atmosphere.

The story comes full circle and ends with James, battered and exhausted, being picked up by a motorist in the same way as he picked up Jack. By then one's head is full of questions. Where is the meaning? Even if one cannot find it, it is impossible not to be fascinated by the film.