Movie Review : The Oxford Murders (2008)

I remember the first time I was confronted to somebody else's idiocy. Not the ''you're-disagreeing-with-me-so-you're-an-idiot'' kind of idiocy but true, self-contragulatory lack of wit. I was heartbroken and I didn't even like the guy. A common trait of all idiots is to claim intelligence. They believe that mirroring qualities is the same thing as possessing them. THE OXFORD MURDERS looks every bit the part of a fun, cerebral amateur sleuth thriller, but there are reasons beyond the lack of proper American distribution that can explain its lack of success. If you feel limber enough to watch it, you'll actually figure out why most American theaters didn't run it. THE OXFORD MURDERS is kind of a stupid movie. I'm somewhat of an idiot myself for sitting through it.

Martin (Elijah Wood) is an American student in Oxford University, seeking the reputable mathematical logic professor Arthur Seldom (John Hurt) to supervise his PhD thesis. Although Seldom initially refuses and humiliates him publically, Martin is a little rat and seeks housing with friends of the professor in order to get closer to him. It's ultimately murder that binds Martin and Seldom together. Martin's landlady and old friend of Arthur Seldom (the late Anna Massey) gets killed and a coded message is sent to the professor. Someone is taking personally the crisis of faith Seldom is having with math. That mysterious person seems hellbent on proving the old man that even the worst atrocities can be done in cold, rational logic and the landlady is only his first piece of hard evidence.

The network series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation reached insane peaks of popularity for several reasons, one of them being that it's watchable and makes you feel smart at the same time. The characters keep breaking down basic points of forensic science in every episode like they're in freshman year of college hell and handle cool, science-fiction interface to find dangerous criminals. You never really learn anything important about forensics, but it makes you feel a part of the gang. THE OXFORD MURDERS operates under the same principles, except that the characters don't seem to go themselves beyond the first page of a logic book. It's a dfficult subject to make a movie about, I'll admit that. I'm sure the Guillermo Martinez novel it's adapted from is far more challenging *. But it's disappointing to witness the profoundly dumb nature of the mystery as it is unveiled. Especially that these characters are supposed to be intellectual elite ** or something. By wanting everybody to understand the riddle, THE OXFORD MURDERS ended up creating a non-event around characters who are to wrapped up within themselves to figure it out.

THE OXFORD MURDERS wouldn't have insulted me if it played fair with the viewer. But in oder to keep you guessing, it deliberately keeps information from you. It throws suspects into the storyline left and right, but keeps awfully quiet about the murderers' riddle, which should drive the entire narrative. How cool would it be to have suspects pointed out by a logical equation, which I'm sure it's what Guillermo Martinez's novel is about. But no, the characters work on the riddle without sharing information with the viewer so they can look intelligent. THE OXFORD MURDERS is also pretty damn vain about its academic subject. Arthur Seldom is giving a lecture on Wittgenstein and his only point is that truth is mathematical and Seldom doesn't believe in mathematics anymore because bad things can happen in the world. What kind of garbage logic is that? Can an old cynical professor get a grip on himself? Planes can crash and animal species can go instinct and I'm pretty sure it doesn't invalidate the principles of trigonometry ***.

I can't tell you to skip THE OXFORD MURDERS with a clear conscience because it's not going to leave you cold. It's a great movie to watch in an adverserial state of mind. It's fun to poke holes into its pretentious facade. You can also ignore it and nothing bad will happen to you. That's a logic I can't argue with. THE OXFORD MURDERS broke my heart a little bit, because it concealed its lack of wit until the very end of the movie. It's not deceitfully simple or anything like that. It's hollow, substance-less. Being the kind soul that I am, I watched it so you won't have to. But if you feel like picking it apart, it's not going to make your job harder. THE OXFORD MURDERS probably made me look smarter than I really am. Anyway, the moral of this story is: beware of idiots, they will break your heart.

* Martinez has a PhD in mathematical logic after all. I assume he knows how to make it interesting.

** Please notice my snarky tone when I say that.

*** Which is, by the way. WAY too advanced for this movie. Not that I remember a lot about the subject myself. Only that it made my life miserable in high school.