Cassandra and her Dream

This will be a little post on Woody Allen's latest film, Cassandra's Dream, I didn't want it to be lost in the randomness that was the "SUPRISE BUTTSECKS" earlier post.

Cassandra's Dream is the spiritual sequel of sorts to Allen's '05 film, Match Point. Similarly to that one, there's a significant lack of humor, New York, jazz music and Woody Allen himself in this movie. Some people didn't really warm up to this, having been used to Allen's movies of the last 30 years. Still, Match Point was a bigger success with the critics than Cassandra's Dream it seems.

I was never one to pay much attention to the critics, though, especially when it came to badly-received Allen movies. I openly admit to being a Woody Allen fanboy, I've loved a lot of his so-called "failures", including the Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Holywood Ending, and last year's Scoop. They're funny, witty, feel-good movies, and I genuinely have a good time watching them. I don't see why I shouldn't like them, even if they are not as deep or sophisticated as some of Allen's better movies, like Annie Hall or Hannah and her Sisters.

On a side-note, if for Allen filming one movie every year is a form of therapy, then watching said movie is a form of therapy for me. End of side-note.

Back to Cassandra's Dream, the lack of all the usual Allen trademarks doesn't hit you as bad as in Match Point, in which for the first 30 minutes I wasn't quite sure what I was watching. In Match Point it honestly felt that Allen himself wasn't quite sure where he was going either, as those first 30 minutes kind of dragged along without really going anywhere. The rest of the movie made up for that, though.

Anyway, seriously back to Cassandra's Dream now, the first thing that should get your attention is the cinematography, which is brilliant and beautiful, and the music. For the first time in ages (if not ever), Allen used original music in a movie of his, created by the acclaimed composer Phillip Glass. It really makes a difference, and helps elevate the most important parts of the movie.

As for the script of the movie itself, which has been the most criticized, while not without its faults, it's still really good. It may be somewhat predictable and perhaps not that original, but it's very deep, with a lot of allusions and metaphors, not to mention that it deals with some of Allen's (and mine) favorite themes. Death being, quite unsurprisingly, one of them, but also irony, on a cosmic level. Death because deciding who is to live and who is to die is tricky, risky business and comes with a lot of consequences, and irony because there's always a little detail that we have no power over that may very well affect the entire outcome of an event.

What came as a bit of a surprise to me was the main characters, portrayed by Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrel. While not as two-dimensional as some critics might have you think, they're still not that well-developed and feel sometimes as a little more detailed stock character, especially Farrel's Terry. This may have to do with the fact that Farrel is a terrible actor, but there's no excuse for McGregor's Ian. Ian, while brought to life by a good performance by McGregor, still feels a little like the generic ambitious underachiever.

On the other hand, the secondary characters are wonderful, and often catch you by surprise. I was especially fond of the character of Uncle Howard, an opportunist with his own moral rules. He doesn't get a lot of screen time, but he's the main driving force behind the story, he is the one that sets the brothers Ian and Terry to kill a man they don't even know, after all. I also enjoyed the father of the two boys (called simply "Mr. Blaine, we never learn his first name), he's pretty much Joe Average, but with a lot of conventional wisdom to share. Some of his lines really did catch me by surprise. And then there's Hayley Atwell's character, Angela Stark, who really makes an impression on you. I guess the character must be interesting, but Ms. Atwell is so damn beautiful you won't even care. I mean it!

All in all, I find that Cassandra's Dream is a good drama, though Match Point was indeed the better movie, and Crimes and Misdemeanors is still Allen's finest in that regard. But in its own rights, Cassandra's Dream is a fine movie, that should be enjoyed by everyone, be they Allen fans or not.

As for me, would I prefer it if Woody Allen went back to New York and filmed comedies there, under a Jazz soundtrack? Yes, I would. But I like this different batch of movies he has released lately as well, so I'm not complaining.