Another fine serious outing for Woody Allen
Published 2:05 pm Thursday, January 17, 2008
“Cassandra’s Dream” is further evidence that Woody Allen could leave comedy behind and never look back. Compare this somber film and the equally serious “Match Point” with feeble comic outings such as “Scoop,” and there’s little question which side wins out.
Like “Match Point,” the new one returns Allen to the subject of murder in London. (He doesn’t appear in the film, by the way.) The title, and pieces of dialogue, let us know that Allen is interested in a Greek tragedy here, the kind of story in which people can’t buck their fatal flaws.
We meet two brothers, classical opposites. Ian (Ewan McGregor) is upwardly mobile, a guy with big schemes about vaguely making it in the world of finance. Meanwhile, he’s helping out in his father’s struggling restaurant.
Terry (Colin Farrell) is a garage mechanic with a gambling habit — although oddly enough, he’s the more likable brother. When a disaster at cards puts him seriously in debt, both brothers are in a position of having to do something bad for money.
Someone needs them to commit murder, a job they are unsuited for. But if this sounds like a possible set-up for comic relief, understand that Allen keeps the screws tightened. Scenes flick by at breakneck speed, as though Allen were in a hurry to follow this gloomy yarn to its inevitable end.
In general, I enjoyed watching the brothers mess up their lives. Colin Farrell comes through with his most bearable performance yet, and he plays well off McGregor, who’s spot-on in his timing and gestures.
The cast is very good, with Tom Wilkinson expert as the brothers’ wealthy uncle, and Sally Hawkins excellent as Terry’s patient girlfriend. Can’t-miss future star Hayley Atwell is properly mysterious and vexing as an actress who takes up with Ian (believing him to be much richer than he is), and old pro Phil Davis is exactly right as the man marked for murder.
Allen can’t quite trust the material to speak for itself; a writer at heart, he has the characters speaking too profoundly about what we’ve already seen for ourselves. It’s as though he imagined himself Arthur Miller, writing a tragedy for the stage, when in fact a bit of judicious pruning would’ve gone a long way.
The biggest bust in “Cassandra’s Dream” is the way the movie plunges along without any real surprises or subplots. Perhaps this brings it closer to Allen’s tribute to Greek tragedy, but it makes the ending more of a shrug than a knockout — and leaves the point of the whole thing obvious from the first five minutes.
