CASSANDRA’S DREAM

LOOK, I’M WOODY. HOWDY, HOWDY, HOWDY.

Starring Ewan McGregor

Trailer

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Is an auteur an auteur if his films make you want to die? Can being an artist trump morality? Will this be known as the ‘Polanski Doctrine’? Cassandra’s Dream is meant to be a thriller, a morality play, a competent piece of cinema. In reality it’s scrawled by a child on a wall, a child who’s a seventy five year old man facing a crippling case of dementia and attempting to show the world he’s still capable of coherent thought… when he’s not. He’s really not. People don’t talk like this. It’s not entertaining, it’s not thought-provoking, its not realistic. Ahhhhhh… but it’s a ‘morality tale’! Films in general don’t have to adhere rigorously to the constraints of realism. Pirates of the Caribbean doesn’t contain an ending where Jack Sparrow peels of a skin lesion and eats it, succumbing all at once to lonely sea-madness and sun-drenched cancerous death, or a disclaimer that states that Johnny Depp is an actor. But if a film’s not realistic it has to be something, not a DVD case sized gulf in the universe. This is yet another sequel to Exposition: The Movie, a technique that might pass for arthouse if it wasn’t so funny. Allen never gave up on making comedies; he simply evolved to a different plane of humour and told the world that he was making serious films, and the world believed him because they hoped they hadn’t put their faith and belief in the ideal of genius into anything more than a clown.

The women come out best again, Hayley Atwell and Sally Hawkins at least attempting to bring some feeling and identification into the bizarre mangles of dialogue they’ve been given. McGregor and Farrell simply look lost and confused, like they might burst into tears at any minute when they realize they’ve wasted their time. And you will. You’ll cry. You’ll weep with the realization that you’ve lost more precious minutes on earth, lost life itself. But have a heart, weep some more for Allen’s followers in the seventies; watching Cassandra’s Dream they’ve time, sanity and respect for a man they once loved.