tavernier wrote:It's too bad that after all the great music he's put in his films--with the tops being Prokofiev in Love and Death and the last Schubert quartet in Crimes and Misdemeanors--he pollutes his newest film's soundtrack with Philip Glass's dreck.
I hate Philip Glass too, but maybe Allen will put it to good use. Mishima is an example of one of Glass's scores being effective.
I'm also happy someone else thinks the Prokofiev was great in Love and Death.
Cassandra's Dream is a film which I thoroughly enjoyed. Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor are perfectly cast as brothers Terry and Ian. Colin Farrell, although something of a boor in real life, is one of the finest actors in cinema today. When he is placed in the hands of a capable director, watching him act is like drinking a fine wine (if you do not believe me, rent Tigerland). Placed in the hands of Woody Allen, his performance is superb. His facial expressions as he contemplates the deed that his character, Terry, has been asked perform by his Uncle Howard had the entire theatre rolling in the aisles.
Ewan McGregor, who is similarly talented, also delivers a fantastic performance. He and Farrell had a wonderful on-screen chemistry that lent significant credibility to his role as Farrell's brother. It was interesting for me to observe during the press interviews that their brotherly banter continued off-screen as well.
In addition to its fine acting performances, Cassandra's Dream also delivers the flowing screenplay and witty dialogue that audiences have come to expect from Woody Allen. Although a tragedy, the film manages to deliver several very amusing scenes. The ending of the film is shocking and abrupt, although this seems to make sense in the context of the broader story.'
The Elegant Dandy Fop wrote:I'm also happy someone else thinks the Prokofiev was great in Love and Death.
Credit where it's very much due - that was editor Ralph Rosenblum's idea. Allen wanted to use Stravinsky, and was completely sold on the idea until Rosenblum showed him some sequences edited to Prokofiev pieces.
Looks great; I love the acting and the way the first boat scene is covered.
Also, according to several reviews online, the new documentary on Philip Glass, "Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts," features footage of he and Woody working on "Cassandra's Dream,"
The film artfully explores the many facets of Glass's life, blending them into a seamless whole. Glass draws upon the East and the West, the spiritual and the earthy, the serious and the playful. On one day, he reminisces with Ravi Shankar; on another, he talks shop with Woody Allen (whose film Cassandra's Dream, scored by Glass, is a Gala screening at this year's Festival).
Much, much better than the international trailer, although the presentation is still a little too "modern" for what looks to be a far more classical drama. Music-wise, that definitely sounds like Philip Glass in the beginning, and I'll bet that's his score...very nice!
Domestic Poster:
Like the new trailer, much better than what came before it.
When the Glass music stops playing, the movie begins to look much more generic than it probably is. The Woody Allen credit at the end is practically the punchline to a joke; if this trailer is played in theaters, people will laugh.
God am I exhausted by the "Woody does drama" jokes and befuddlement. Anyway, I had no problem with the original trailer and this one only confirms my excitement. Can't wait.
It will be interesting to see how you guys respond to this one. I'm pretty ambivalent about it at the moment. I was most certainly not ambivalent about Match Point; I loved it and thought it was one of the finest films of '05. Take that for what you will. I put it out there in the service of full disclosure.
Cassandra's Dream is constructed with readily apparent care and explicit precision. It becomes clear that Allen is establishing character types in detail in order to then confront these types with a moral complication which will evoke varied responses from them. At least that seems to be the point. And it's a good one while it lasts but I think Woody may have miscalculated the variations possible from each of his film's component parts (if this all sounds too clinical it isn't).
The main characters are drawn rather broadly and it's hard to see them as individuals beyond their social or economic signification. I do appreciate the additional thematic possibilities afforded by the fact that McGregor in certain respects can be said to represent Allen, still haunted by the specter of an unacknowledgeable past--a class associated past, of course. There is a strange remoteness at play here as well which is hard to entirely reconcile; we get the expected Dostoyevsky styled moments of introspection, bemoaning the indifference with which suffering and injustice are met; but nothing here touches the transcendent melancholy of the scene in Match Point in which Chris is confronted by the ghosts of his victims.
Still, maybe part of Allen's purpose was for this film's end to act as a repudiation of some sort to critics who found the end of Match Point to be dismissable nihilism. Here he allows for a certain kind of cosmic justice to prevail and yet (and this is what's good about the picture, though it can only ever be hinted at given its design) he merely illustrates a set of circumstances. This, perhaps, was the point of the somewhat bloodless and uninvolving presentational style. Perhaps it's simply a more refined nihilism; going beyond even an acknowledgment of the petty, presumed moral authority we place on our actions. Or perhaps it's a more genuine despair, a capitulation to the arbitrary as the only certain sustaining principle. Either way, we're kept at a Haneke-esque remove, and kept from even the limited, human connection we are allowed in the comparatively generous Match Point.
It's hard for me to imagine that someone would respond favorably to Cassandra's Dream if they didn't like Match Point but then again a lot of things are hard to imagine.
Anyway, to put a slightly finer point on it, for me the reason the latter is a more successful film than the former (and they are similar enough for such a comparison to be worth making) is that Allen allows Match Point to retain a certain sentimentality, minimal as it may be. This is something which is conspicuously absent in the new picture. It's true that in both films characters agonize over moral and ethical questions but only in Match Point do those questions feel shared by the artist, and that's what gives it whatever tragic heft it may have. As I said before, Cassandra's Dream occupies different territory emotionally and intellectually. It's a much more clean, precise work (for better and for worse--I'm still not sure whether bookending the film in the way Allen does is savvy or shallow), and the result is a film which always maintains a perfectly steady gaze. Even the choice to turn away at a key point is symptomatic of a kind of rarified cultured distaste rather than moral distress. Its elegant sheen precludes too much emotional investment and keeps it within the bounds of a clinical assessment. That's why it ultimately resonates less. A heavily analytic approach can certainly work but it doesn't here because if that's what the commitment is to it never goes far enough. And Farrell's performance is a distraction, too--not because it isn't good but because Allen's aesthetic works against him.
I think the Haneke comparison is an apt one. Woody seems to have been striving to acquire a more "sophisticated" European sensibility when it comes to his consideration of moral distress. In other words, one of dispassionate objectification, an almost anthropological remove, lending itself not to curiosity but to nullification and vacuity.
Release date moved back, yet again. From the New York Daily News:
Woody Allen's Latest Film Off the '07 Calendar
Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream" looks to be a casualty of the awards season. The Woodman's new film, his third straight made in England, has long been scheduled for a Dec. 28 release, which would qualify it for the Academy Awards. But the film, which stars Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell as cockney brothers drawn into a crime by a young woman, has been completely ignored by the various critics groups, the National Board of Review and yesterday the Golden Globes.
Today, the Weinstein Co. pushed its release date back to Jan. 18, when it will open nationally.
"Cassandra's Dream" premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September and got respectable notices. The Daily Variety critic dissed it, but the reviews collated at www.rottentomatoes.com are all positive.
So, I guess it's officially a 2008 release then (i.e. it won't be eligable for any Oscars)?
Meanwhile, John Cope, even though you didn't care for this film, the more you write about it, the more I'm absolutely convinced that it will blow my socks off.
Too bad I have to wait another month. When did I start this thread, thirteen months ago? However, it seems like (for me, anyway) it will be more than worth the wait.
Well, I answered my own question: according to the 2007 Oscar Remainder List, Cassandra's Dream is not eligible for Oscar nominations this year, so it's officially a 2008 release.
And a couple links: A cool five minute video interview with Colin Farrell and Woody Allen after the NY premiere of the film (among other things, Woody reveals that his next film will not only be a return to NY, but it will in fact be a comedy) and (finally!) twelve 30 second clips from the Philip Glass score are up at Amazon. Sounds great, I look forward to hearing it in its entirety.
I'm really excited about the new Allen film, and love Phillip Glass -- but after listening to the previews on Amazon, it sounds like "The Illusionist: Part Deux." Hopefully, when I hear the soundtrack over the images, it will be different.
What the hell!? One of my favorite theaters was showing it as a release for this Friday, and now there is a no listing in their "Coming Soon" section. AHH!!!
Where'd you get this info Jeff? Why would they do this at the last minute? Apologies for my ignorance on this.
Dylan wrote:Only five days left until Cassandra's 300 theatre release.
The release has been cut to 120 screens. That, coupled with the bump to mid-January dumping season does not bode well.
Disappointing to say the least. At least the turnover from theatrical release to DVD for Woody's films have been very short. I seem to recall that Match Point was on DVD about two months after the theatrical run began. Scoop was within a few months as well.
bkimball wrote:Where'd you get this info Jeff? Why would they do this at the last minute? Apologies for my ignorance on this.
Box Office Mojo is a good source for screen counts. I'm guessing that screens are at a premium right now with Oscar contenders going into re-release over the next two weeks and that the Weinstein Company doesn't have much faith in the picture's ability to reach beyond the arthouse circuit. If it does especially well this weekend, it could expand to a few more markets.
Though Armond's review is nothing if not predictably overly broad in its invective, he does hit one particular point that nails my problem with this one:
It’s wearying to watch Allen’s murder obsession when he doesn’t know how to dramatize morality. The brothers and their women show little moral range. When Farrell affectingly portrays a man tormented by guilt, Allen quickly dispenses with his brotherly anguish.
It's an aggressive denial of the genuine humanness of the predicament, something that characterizes many of the films Armond notes in his piece. It's interesting to note that the one truly radical effort within the recent spate of nihilist pictures, Branagh's Sleuth, is the one which has gone most unacknowledged.
From the first shot till the last, I drank in Allen's inimitable direction, the smooth mechanics of the plot, the perfect dialogue and Vilmos Zsigmond's careening camera and vivid lighting (I love long takes, and there are some gorgeous and colorful outside shots, not to mention the crystal blue water of the opening scenes and the red glow of the theatre and bar). The script is very classically structured, allowing each of two brothers to find nuance and delicate shading before they make some horrible decisions and forge ahead with reckless abandon, with no turning back.
The Philip Glass score is quite beautiful and suspenseful, but I'd venture to estimate that there's only 25 or 30 minutes of music in the film (there's probably more music on the CD). Although I'll admit I wonder how the film would've felt had Allen gone the Match Point route and compiled another collection of old classical recordings for the soundtrack, I'll resist that pondering because the atmosphere Glass creates is very pleasing and interesting. The outdoor country scenes, which are beautiful and entertaining in their own right (i.e McGregor and the waitress having the picnic and fishing), are only made moreso with the music, and there are two very "Hitchcockian" sequences (one involving a possibly impending murder with constant set-backs, the other a superb extended 'stalking' passage) where Philip Glass lays the music on the image in a similar vein as Herrmann did decades ago for Hitch (in scoring and tracking only, certainly not in style, which is all Glass), and these are fun, as are the more intense cues for the pivotal and climactic dramatic scenes.
But aside from Allen's terrific writing, the greatest part of Cassandra's Dream is the caliber of the performances. Colin Farrell certainly gives the greatest performance I've ever seen from him - spasmodic, vulnerable, dangerously aloof at points and frequently intoxicated, in the final scenes all of these simultaneously. Ewan McGregor is a joy to watch, as always, as his character carries the dramatic situations and complications with an assurance and sense of cool that is completely dichotomous with his brother's nervous and drunk intensity, which creates some entertaining and dramatically unpredictable dynamics. This is where some of the humor is that the critics are speaking of, but I wouldn't necessarily say any of this is any "funnier" than Match Point...this is just Allen's wit inevitably coming through.
Hayley Atwell's luminous, sultry and indulgent Angela gives Match Point's Chris Wilton (Rhys-Meyers) a run for his money insofar as sexiest character from an Allen film. She's outstandingly gorgeous and statuesque from our first glimpse of her (it's in the trailer - when the car swoops by and she gazes straight into the lens), and the scene that plays out from our first glance expressively bathes her in thick dabbles of warm sunshine (not unlike Johansson's dreamlike glow in her first scene in Match Point). A lot of it is the way she carries herself - a mountain of cunning, high maintenance and sexuality. She has some fun dialogue, too...more than once I found myself thinking “that’s exactly what this kind of woman would say in that situation." Fascinating how her character's acting on stage is completely and utterly stale...and I think it's supposed to be, perhaps indicting McGregor's motives for attaining her (see spoilers for more of this). Tom Wilkinson only has a few scenes, but his lines are the most powerful in the entire film - I like how his character is progressively built up as an ambiguous but godlike enigma of the family tree right until we're finally introducted to him. Kudos to Allen for creating some great characters and getting some great performances from the cast.
As far as the much-discussed ending goes, I did find it distancing and oddly matter-of-fact (particularly for Allen, as I've never been 'distanced' or emotionally thrown by an ending of his before), but I will discuss that and much more with plenty of spoilers below...
--Spoilers--
I enjoyed how planning and committing the crime really brings McGregor to life as opposed to the misery and dread it causes Farrell...but I think this very well could be because the murder seals McGregor's fate, providing him with a definite and ideal future - a home in California with a sexy wife and a chain of hotels. This is perhaps why Atwell's 'excellent' acting on stage is so stale...she's, in part, a representation of the artifice and comfort he's after. The sexy La Dolce Vita. I completely believe Atwell's character when she tells him in their final scene together that she loves him - in each other they've discovered and acquired the future they're looking for.
It's telling that it's essentially McGregor's complete inability to come up with a productive response to his brother’s behavior that leads to the chaos surrounding their deaths (and it indeed was chaos from rage and circumstance). McGregor is essentially like his uncle, and will kill to achieve the future he wishes, even when his own brother threatens to self-destruct and take everybody with him.
When discussing Farrell's morality, keep in mind that his future was less glorious and artificial than McGregor's...money problems aside, he already has a sturdy relationship and he lacks 'impossible' dreams, and consequently the ambition and perseverance to progress in life. His life following the murder will not be incredibly different from what it was before, and the biggest difference (the paying back of the debt, the lack of financial problems and the promise of opening a sports shop) will only lead to worse things because he gets his greatest thrills in life while gambling, which he would no doubt continue doing (especially with more money)...so he doesn't have nearly as much to gain as McGregor or Wilkinson, and would rather lose what he has now than retain the guilt.
And that's brilliant, as is the fact that they both kill each other out of a fit of moment-by-moment chaos, with McGregor ultimately changing his mind but Farrel losing control over his guilt/alcohol-induced aggression. Tragic and unexpected. But the presentation of what happens is quite odd. After re-reading John's intelligent critique, I must concur, the ending is a strangely Haneke-esque removal, and I'm also not entirely convinced this was the right decision.
There's this massive emotional build-up for the final scene on the water - with Farrel's guilt and morality, the decisions he will make when he returns that will ruin Wilkinson and McGregor's "perfect" lives, the cutting of the pills, the slamming of the poisoned bottle, the rage on the boat...all scored to absolutely riveting effect by Glass, and then...boom...then, cut...and a minute later it's over.
It's interesting. If it wasn't I wouldn't be discussing it here. But...does it really, truly match what has come before? It's obviously a distinctly "European" touch to have what would've been the film's biggest scene occur off-screen (for me, the scene in question would've been Farrel's emotions and nerves exploding before killing himself on the boat, then showing the discovery, reactions, etc.). The cutting to several hours later is intriguing, and I'm also trying to figure out the significance of cutting back to Atwell and Hawkins at the shop...Hawkins picks out an article of clothing and Atwell comments, "that's just like the shirt I wore when I first met Ian," then we mysteriously cut back to the boat.
While Woody Allen is certainly all over this film from corner to corner, I don't feel his presence in the ending. But I'm still sorting my thoughts...
I really enjoyed your thoughts, Dylan. I saw the film today and loved it, too. I also found the ending strange, even off-putting, but hours later I still can't shake the film. The shock of the last few moments is so strong, that I think it could have only been achieved via the devices Allen used. He removes the drama from the end of the film. The information the detectives give us, as I sat in my seat, jaw on the floor, is all they will ever know about the affair. And it is the only scene that Allen refuses to let us watch.
