CASSANDRA’S DREAM THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: Woody Allen
Written By: Woody Allen
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, Hayley Atwell, Sally Hawkins, Tom Wilkinson, John Benfield, Clare Higgins, Phil Davis, Jim Carter, David Horovitch, Cate Fowler, Tom Fisher
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 11/18/07
Opens: December 28, 2007 Woody Allen turns away from the simplicity of his early comedies like “Bananas” and from his mature urban masterpieces like “Annie Hall,” while eschewing the near-failures of his reaches into Ingmar Bergman territory (“Crimes and Misdemeanors”). With “Cassandra”s Dream” Mr. Allen presents a highly watchable melodrama with some Greek-tragic undertones about a pair of brothers who, like flawed Greek tragic heroes, strive beyond the natural boundaries of human beings and are called to account for their hubristic dreams. While those of us in the audience brought up by a steady diet of Woody Allen films might prophesy their fate as would the Greek character Cassandra--daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy whose beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy—the director throws in enough twists to keep us on our toes while maintaining a rhythmic pace to his tight script. With Philip Glass’s roiling music punctuating the action only intermittently, Allen focuses on brothers Ian and Terry Blaine (Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell), Ian working in the restaurant owned by his parents (John Benfield and Claire Higgins) but with a dream of investing in California hotels and taking up residence in the States. His brother Terry ekes out a living in a garage but feels alive only when making money at the dog track or playing cards, though at one point he’s down almost $180,000, in debt to loan sharks, ready to do anything to raise the money. After the two brothers buy a small yacht which they call “Cassandra’s Dream” after the name of a Greyhound that won a race paying 60-1, both good things and bad occur, events that prod the pair to extremes. As we learned from the Greek playwrights and most recently from the movie “Beowulf,” bad things happen to people who eschew moderation. For his part, Ian chases a beautiful, “high-maintenance” actress, Angela Stark (Hayley Atwell), who dangles him on a string, promising her a career in Hollywood, buying her expensive gifts during their courtship, while Terry joins Ian in a meeting with their American uncle, Howard (Tom Wilkinson), who has a plan that would set the young sibs up for life provided that they do a dangerous job for him. At that point, the family dysfunction/romantic motif turns to Victorian-style melodrama, with writer-director Allen successfully building tension to the fateful conclusion. The film is not without imperfections, the leadings ones being the difficulty that the two principals have in maintaining lower-middle-class London accents. Ewan MacGregor is Scottish, a native of that province’s city of Crieff, while Colin Farrell is a Dubliner. Their speech is forced, sometimes falling off the track. Nor do the two look alike in any way while John Benfield in the role of Mr. Blaine, their father, looks more Greek than British. Tom Wilkinson, who could never turn in a bad performance, is fine in his too-small role here (if you want to see him really strut his stuff, don’t miss his Oscar-worthy supporting role as Arthur Edens in Michael Gilroy’s “Michael Clayton”), with Hayley Atwell as every young man’s dream of a hard-to-get potential girlfriend. “Cassandra’s Dream” is filmed by Woody Allen’s regular lenser Vilmos Zsigmond proficiently albeit without any special look, a movie that does not bear Mr. Allen’s signature style but is nonetheless an entertaining celluloid project. Rated PG-13. 108 minutes. © 2007 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online
| 
