cinemattraction

The third entrant in Woody Allen’s now ended European sojourn, Cassandra’s Dream proves the weakest thus far of the de facto quadrilogy that also includes Match Point, Scoop and next summer’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona. This past summer Allen eulogized Ingmar Bergman in a New York Times Op-Ed, and it may be no coincidence that his latest feels like a warmed-over, superficial version of one of the Swedish master’s morality plays. It’s a stern, serious movie that explores weighty themes regarding death and moral turpitude, but it weaves through them hastily and without the nuance usually characteristic of the director.

Allen’s ability to attract high-caliber talent evidently undimmed, Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell star as middle class Cockney brothers Ian and Terry. The former attempts to involve himself in some business deals in order to elevate his social standing; while the latter works in auto repair and indulges a gambling addiction, with the more modest goal of purchasing a home for himself and his girlfriend Kate (Sally Hawkins). When things fall through and they find themselves in tight spots, they turn to their rich Uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) for help. He agrees, but with a stipulation that sends the brothers on a dangerously immoral path.

Though the narrative seems expressly geared towards the sort of searing exploration of the human conscience Allen has previously perfected, the filmmaker never cracks its surface. A variety of factors impede any sort of substantial involvement in the proceedings. For one, the filmmaker brings the picture a slick stylistic sheen that seems somehow too tidy and ordered for a story of lives coming apart. He breezes by the moments of introspection so essential to the plight of the characters, reducing those instances to some hastily scripted conversations between the leads. The material demands brooding, intense feeling but it’s instead been given a light touch.

Similarly, McGregor and Farrell bring the wrong tone to their performances. Allen’s operating principle in writing the characters appears to have been to make them as likable as possible, a thorough miscalculation. Following his lead, the stars exude endless charm in their interactions with one another and the women in their lives. And there they remain, in a developmental stasis – when things grow dire and circumstances seem to demand an attitude adjustment, at the very least. Although Farrell, to his credit, makes some kind of effort to draw out the weak willed Terry’s inner turmoil, Allen so deemphasizes the actor’s overtures in that direction that they seem rather obligatory.

Though the filmmaker achieves some sense of verisimilitude in his evocation of the rhythms of middle-class London life, as foreign to him as any milieu he’s ever depicted, he never seems engaged in doing so. This results in the cut-and-dry aesthetic, in which the director pays his complements to the world without ever becoming immersed in it or finding an interesting way to contextualize the story therein. A sense of chilliness runs through Cassandra’s Dream, a static detachment that robs it of any human feeling and establishes it as one of the director’s lesser efforts.

© 2008 Robert Levin. All rights reserved.

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