Short Takes. "Beginners" and "Sleeping Beauty".

Here are two films so in love with their concepts that they manage to both completely enthrall or distance themselves from their audiences. In Sleeping Beauty, director Julia Leigh gives us a retelling of the classic story by setting it in a luxurious brothel. Emily Browning plays Lucy, a college student who deals with sex to get what she wants but fear not, this isn't one of those trashy sex movies. In fact there is almost no sex onscreen, except for the kind of erotic service she provides: every evening, Lucy is drugged by her madame (the eerie Blake) who puts her to sleep and lets men - usually older and very grotesque - do to her whatever she wants, except penetrate her. Leigh's postfeminist take on the classic children's story does make us wonder if something similar could've happened to the poor heroine in the story we all know so well. Was this sleeping chick a magnet for necrophilia-loving trolls and villains? 

What disappoints about this tale is that we only think of this, because the film is so dull, so full of itself and its pace so comatose that we wonder if we weren't drugged as well. Browning still fails to prove what's so special about her to make her the star of recent big productions and Leigh's literary knowledge fails to ignite any sort of cinematic spark. 

Mike Mills' Beginners inversely, seems to have been adapted from a Dave Eggers' novel (or any other hipster icon for that matter) and it works, despite it being an extreme case of "look at how indie I am". Ewan McGregor once again dazzles, in a totally underrated way, as Oliver, an illustrator (of course) trying to deal with his father's death.
His father is played by the astonishing Christopher Plummer who gives a performance full of such joy and wonder that one can't help but fall in love with him. He plays a man who comes out of the closet after his wife's death, his boyfriend is played by Višnjić and their scenes together might be the most memorable in the film, as they ring true in their depiction of simplicity and awe. The lush Mélanie Laurent plays Oliver's love interest and needless to say so, their story falls so deep into its own delusional drama that you only want the scenes to go back to Plummer. The film is excessively twee and might be too sweet for its own good. The problem is that it fails to acknowledge this and surprisingly this also becomes its salvation. By failing to see its flaws the movie moves and talks like the beautiful girl who smiles at everyone and hasn't realized she has a piece of lettuce stuck on her teeth.

Grades: Sleeping Beauty *           Beginners **

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.

Andrew Niccol doing sci-fi? Count me in! However I'm still unsure of what exactly does Justin Timberlake's "acting" bring to the movies...

Also this poster looks like a CK ad.

The next two posters are for the new Steven Soderbergh movies and ugh, this man is a genius. He hand picked the designers for his marketing campaign and chose some of the best in the business (the ones that make Criterion covers...)

The one for Contagion has a District 9 feel and truly what stands out in this poster, and also in the one for Haywire is that Soderbergh goes beyond the worshiping of the movie star...

...he has some of the greatest living actors in these two movies, also some of the most beautiful people. Yet on the posters he goes for an appraisal of graphic design as an art form. The one for Contagion has a very retro touristy feel. As if disease took over the mentioned cities. It's also important to mention how influenced by industrial design are these posters. The first one loves typography while the one for Haywire pays tribute to the great Saul bass and to iconic movie posters of the 70s without obviously ripping them off.

I have to admit I don't even miss seeing Fassy's gorgeous mug in it...

Excited about the new Soderbergh flicks?

I Love You, Phillip Morris *½

Director: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Cast: Jim Carrey, Ewan McGregor
Leslie Mann, Rodrigo Santoro, Brennan Brown
Trey Burvant, Antoni Corone

It shouldn't be a surprise that movies about gay lead characters are still pretty much dealt with as strange novelties. It should be refreshing however to find a film with recognizable movie stars taking on these characters. This film does both, yet the only truly risque thing about I Love You, Phillip Morris is how often it pushes its condescension towards outrageous bad taste.
Based on the real life story of gay con man Steven Jay Russell (Carrey), it attempts to be Catch Me If You Can by way of a parody of Monster.
The film begins with an unarguably exciting sense of wonder as we meet Steven and his wife Debbie (a sadly underused Mann) a seemingly traditional couple with a secret: he's gay (the revelation by the way is hilarious and has a sense of comedic timing the film never recaptures).
After a life changing accident Steven decides it's time to come out, so he leaves his family, packs his bags and moves to Florida with a man (Santoro).
Seduced by the promise of a new exciting life he soon realizes that "being gay is expensive" leading him to start a life of crime.
He ends up going to jail for fraud and there meets Phillip Morris (McGregor) an angelic looking Southern boy he falls hard for. They begin a relationship and for the rest of the film we see as they try to maintain their love alive, in and out of jail, as Steven copes with his criminal past.
The entire film is plagued with so many tonal discrepancies that for a second or two you might wonder if this indecision by part of the directors to determine what kind of movie they were making is some sort of commentary on sexual unawareness (is this a bicurious movie?).
But of course it's not, it's actually a patronizing, conflicting work that deals with its themes in a completely lost manner.
For starters we begin to wonder why they try so hard to make this into a comedy when the truth is that Russell's life is actually a series of tragedies anchored by what can only be called mentally disturbed behavior.
He's more Tom Ripley than Frank Abagnale Jr. but the directors seem to overlook this because they seem scared of dealing with the darkness in a homosexual character.
Therefore they turn the entire plot into a condescending gag that reveals to us we can only empathize with this man by making fun of his misery.
Carrey, who under able hands can be a brilliant actor, is back to his wacky days here, turning Steven into Liar, Liar with a lisp: a character so devoid of any depth that you can't even muster the energy to dislike him.
All that Carrey does with his performance is turn hissy fits into sissy fits robbing the character (and presumably the real man) from any opportunity to be something more than caricature.
McGregor on the other hand turns in a beautiful, sensitive performance that goes beyond cliché even if the mvoie tries to turn Phillip into a full on Southern belle trapped inside a man.
That he's able to pull off a line like "enough romance, let's fuck" with just enough honesty to make us see the way angst and hormones battle within him as well as making us laugh out hard, makes for a really surprising element and perhaps the one thing that makes this film worthy.
It's a shame that the movie can not commit to being either a fun genre flick or a complex character study because when it's over we just wonder if the title is even right, given that Steven comes off looking as someone who only loves himself and even saying that feels like a lie.

The Ghost Writer ***1/2

Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Olivia Williams, Kim Cattrall
Timothy Hutton, Tom Wilkinson, James Belushi, Robert Pugh
Jon Bernthal, Eli Wallach

Few living directors can muster the same kind of public attention that Roman Polanski attracts. More than countless other filmmakers, his life has always been marked by scandal and tragedy, making it a "public right" of sorts to try and decipher his latest work by way of what the audience knows about him.
Upon the release of The Ghost Writer in early 2010, Polanski was once again facing extradition charges and literally finished working on the film in prison.
It should come as no surprise that after watching this marvelously exciting political thriller, you wonder, even for a second, if Polanski didn't plan all that was happening to him.
After all, this film is proof that few filmmakers have mastered the delicate art of suspense in the way Polanski can. Every twist, line and move in The Ghost Writer feels perfect. He's an apt sorcerer and sets a mood from the opening shot of the film in which we see a ferry unloading its cargo.
Only one car is left behind, it belongs to Mike McAra, who turns up a few days later, drowned on the shore in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.
McAra was working as ghostwriter for Adam Lang (Brosnan), a former British Prime Minister, compiling his memoirs. His death forces the publishing company to find a replacement, they go with Ewan McGregor's nameless character (known as "the ghost" throughout the film), who currently has no familiar attachments and is practically a man without a past. This noir-ish detail sets the tone of what's to come.
The ghost is flown over to Massachusetts to work next to Lang who is staying there while the manuscript is completed. There the ghost meets the charismatic former PM (played by the debonair Brosnan), his unsatisfied wife Ruth (Williams) and his faithful assistant Amelia (the luscious Cattrall) who might be his mistress too.
On the day of the ghost's arrival, a former British minister accuses Lang of having ties with illegal extractions and torture of suspected terrorists. This puts the spotlight on them as the International Criminal Court begins investigating and the worldwide media becomes insane.
Immersing himself in the manuscript, the ghost begins to discover that perhaps Lang might not be as innocent as he seems and there might be something that could incriminate him in his book. So where should he go from that premise? Is he supposed to do the "right thing" and try to help authorities bring Lang to justice, should he help him clear his name, should he quit?
As the possible turns the story could take begin to rack up, so does the questioning that Polanski and co-writer Robert Harris (who also wrote the original novel) ignite.
The film at no moment tries to hide the fact that Lang is a version of Tony Blair and the events around him remind us of George W. Bush's administration, Cheri Blair's persona and Benazir Bhutto assassination among many other contemporary political events.
What differentiates The Ghost Writer from recent attempts of making political thrillers is that Polanski never forgets that a thriller must in fact thrill!
And everything in this movie seems to be conspiring against the ghost and his investigation. Most of the movie takes place in the midst of terrible weather but Polanski is too sly to have it represent the characters' darkness, in his movie the clouds terrify us because we never know what's behind them.
This is essentially why the film works in such unexpected ways; even if everything seems familiar and the plot isn't entirely groundbreaking, the mood more than makes up for it. There's a pervading sense of menace in every frame (and what frames does DP Pawel Edelman come up with!), in every cut, in Alexandre Desplat's mischievously macabre score and in the dialogues.
We are always waiting for something to happen and in this sense the film recalls some of Alfred Hitchcock's best work (think Rebecca by way of North by Northwest) but it also has a lot to say about art and history.
Particularly the way in which said art shapes history, for what is the ghost doing if not rewriting Lang's history? And what is Lang's issue if not his impossibility to be faithful to his own history?
But there is more than meets the eye and this is perhaps where preconceptions about Polanski enter the conversation.
As male driven as The Ghost Writer is, there is a sense that we're also being reminded of the women working behind the curtain. Watch how in several scenes, women are expertly framed in specific shots as if they are being puppet masters to the male actions closer to the camera.
Is Polanski winking at the conspiracy theories involving Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton or is he paying homage to the way the women in his own life designed his own history?
What's true is that no other director could've made this movie and turn it into such a personal genre flick. Why? Because no other director could inspire the kind of debates he does. Stylistically this film is an upgrade of his own The Ninth Gate but thematically it approaches something darker in the vein of Chinatown. What would The Ghost Writer be without Polanski's own tragedies?
Ironically and perversely this movie reminds us that most of the time truth is more incredible than fiction.

The Ten Movies That Defined My Decade.

1. Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)

A lot of things can change in the course of a decade.
My love for "Moulin Rouge!" has not.
To prove it, I will close the countdown by copying a post I wrote three years ago when I had a non-movie exclusive blog and had a countdown of movies that had influenced me.
The post has been copied in its original way, but I assure you that all the giddy, childish excitement remains the same.

"Simply put: ever since I saw it for the first time no other film released after, has filled me with so much hope and undeniably vibrant life as this.
Annie Lennox (and Madonna later) wisely proclaimed that "everybody is looking for something", I agree since I'm involved in a constant search for who knows what (happiness, love...who knows?), the thing is that this movie has put a big stop on my search for cinematic perfection.
It spoiled me!
Back in August 01, for a pricey ticket, I attended the premiere in Tegucigalpa.
I knew the songs by heart since it had spawned curiosity in me ever since it began appearing on Entertainment Weekly's seasonal previews (it did in summer 00, later in winter, until it was finally postponed for 01).
I remember going to its website as early as February 01 and the colorful imagery was something I wasn't used to. It screamed kitsch, yet contained a sad honesty that never allowed it to be selfconscious, it just "was".
I bought the soundtrack and fell in love with the medleys the writers aptly concocted from sources as varied as David Bowie, Madonna, Marilyn Monroe, "The Sound of Music" and Hindi traditions.
Sitting in that dark theater room, before the film even began, I was already expecting the images would fulfill the intensity of the sounds.
I was putting a lot of pressure on it and luckily, it went over my expectations.
The minute I saw a red curtain and a tiny orchestra director appear on the screen I knew this was gonna be different.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, there's not much of an actual plot, or at least one we hadn't seen before: writer meets courtesan, courtesan sings "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend", courtesan gets consumption, writer loses courtesan.
Everything about this film is in how its told. Merging MGM musicals with MTV like editing and more costumes and glitter than you can shake a stick at, "Moulin Rouge!" more than often overwhelms you.
There's too much going on at the same time and somehow it still is capable of ringing emotions.
I haven't met anyone who didn't have a strong reaction towards it.
Those of us who love it, are practically devoted to it.
For me it's a quasi religious experience, each time I watch it it feels like going to my "happy place" (even if it sounds ridiculous considering how sad the ending is) but the mere thought of this film fills me with glee and hope.
I worship Nicole Kidman's performance and think Ewan McGregor is so good he's given for granted, I look up to Baz Luhrmann hoping one day I might get as inspired as he was to make this.
This film often pops up in my head when I think of my "favorite film ever" even if I'm too much of a snob to say it's the best one ever made.
There are those who hate the film and one can't blame them.
My dad watched about an hour and said he felt like puking, my mom loved it and so did my grandma who I remember moved me by highlighting the fact that I bring love for film in my veins.
I saw it with her once and as 20th Century Fox's fanfare filled the theater with strendous power she gasped like a little kid, later the film uses the title song from "The Sound of Music", followed by the ubiquitous can-can song. She hummed them and said "Carlos would've loved this!".
Carlos was her brother, my grand uncle and a self professed film buff (he once saw 17 films in the theater in a week!) who passed away more than ten years ago and who I often think would be my favorite uncle nowadays.
I can not force people to like this movie, truth be told I don't even want to.
I just know that almost six years after I first saw it, no other thing on Earth has impressed me as much, touched me as much or filled me with the unadultered sense of wonder I imagine people had watching the first films made.
"Moulin Rouge!" takes the rules, bends them, reinvents them, makes some work, makes some fail, but always, like the bohemian values it praises, keeps faithful to itself.
How wonderful life is, now that "Moulin Rouge!" is in the world!"

-originally published 12/18/06.

I hope you have enjoyed this countdown as much as I enjoyed sharing it with you.
May the following decade be filled with more cinematic gems.

Angels & Demons **1/2

Director: Ron Howard
Cast: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer
Stellan Skarsgård, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Armin Mueller-Stahl,
Pierfrancesco Favino, Thure Lindhart, David Pasquesi

"Angels & Demons" is like being served a historical conspiracy with your Big Mac.
It knows it doesn't have the background and facts to sustain the implications of the things it has to say about the Catholic church and science.
But it also knows that its real purpose was exclusively to be entertaining. And how it succeeds in that.
Unlike its 2006 predecessor, "The DaVinci Code", this adaptation of Dan Brown's eponymous novel doesn't take itself so seriously. Instead it squeezes every drop out of Brown's pseudo-erudite theories, the Indiana Jones qualities of its hero and the exquisite production values at the director's hands. Call it Catho-exploitation if you like.
Hanks repirses his role as Professor Robert Langdon, Harvard's expert in symbology, who is asked by the Vatican to assist them after four cardinals are kidnapped in the middle of a papal conclave.
The kidnappers have identified themselves as members of the Illuminati, a secret society once persecuted by the church, who have come back to take revenge for crimes committed against their group by the Vatican.
They announce they will kill one cardinal every hour up until midnight in one of the altars of science spread through Rome.
Added to this, the Illuminati have also stolen a vial of antimatter which they plan to use as an explosive device to eradicate the entire Vatican city.
Langdon teams up with sexy scientist Vittoria Vetra (Zurer) to stop them before it's too late. Why the Illuminati don't just nuke the thing to begin with is never fully explained, nor questioned, because it would leave us without any dramatic situations, and no popcorn movie, to begin with.
This is one of the many things you will have to forgive "Angels & Demons" for in advance, otherwise you won't be able to delight in its excesses.
Those not willing to leave their "brains" at the door will see this as an insufferable attempt to feed previously digested intellectual material to the masses.
However, those who fully comprehend the grasp of Ron Howard's successes at achieving any sort of intellectual stimulation in the past, will know that this time obviously won't be any different and are propense to enjoy it while munching on their snacks.
They will however be surprised to see that Howard doesn't completely screw up this time. He obviously has a talent for creating suspenseful situations (even if he reccurs too much to quick cuts and flashy editing as if to hide any possible errors) and there isn't a single sequence in the film that doesn't at least get your heart pulse racing.
Sadly the film works mostly as a series of thrilling individual sequences that never come together as a whole. It feels as if every scene was directed by a different person, but you'll be immersed into the plot before you even begin to notice this.
If there is something Howard still fails to achieve is subtlety and the first half hour of the film represents this perfectly. Langdon is often made to state the obvious ("Illuminati" means enlightened, "sede vacante" means empty seat, which paired with the image of an empty chair feels just plain insulting) and his character sometimes becomes obnoxious in his need to teach.
It doesn't help that he's played by Hanks with a disturbing smugness he tries to pass off as charming cockiness.
But despite Langdon's didactism, Howard actually puts less of himself into this film than he did in "The DaVinci Code" (which arguably had one of the worst finales in memory as it tried to please everyone), therefore we have one of his only films where the ending doesn't suck!
It certainly helps that his ensemble is grounded by some fantastic actors including McGregor who plays the late Pope's Camerlengo and who somehow makes his preachy discourses work.
Skarsgård who is always a joy to watch, here playing the Swiss Guard's commander and does some satisfying job playing someone whose faith is committed to his job.
Mueller-Stahl brings gravitas to his role as an elderly Cardinal who we immediately suspect as a villain (those who haven't read the book will have a fine time trying to solve the mystery) if only because of his strict dedication.
And it's pleasing to see that the film belongs to several less famous actors who make every scene worthy, including Lindhart as a reluctant Vatican officer, Favino as a police detective and the fantastic Kaas who creates a Hassassin you can't take your eyes away from. It would have been interesting to see him portrayed as the sexual beast of the book, but the screenplay completely removes that element, as if Howard was trying to keep away from more controversy. The actor however brings this lust to life with his movements and eyes.
As usual, any sort of controversy spiked by the film is merely an exaggeration. One that should be expected from anything that brings religion and science face to face.
Howard tries his best to balance the two of them and avoid trouble and it's true that audience members will decide on their own on which "team" they belong. This is highlighted splendidly in the very last scene of the film that sends everyone with a smile on their face.
Howard however forgot that film being above all a visual medium, plot machinations sometimes come to mean less than what we see and most definitely the story sometimes becomes obsolete under the weight of images.
Therefore "Angels & Demons" might have chosen a position without even trying to as it features some breathtaking work in order to recreate the Vatican (Howard was denied permission to shoot there for obvious reasons).
The art direction is stunning, but what results more haunting is the work of CGI which sometimes makes your jaw drop in terms of its precision, realness and beauty.
If computers can easily reproduce spiritual temples who needs to actually go to the Vatican? And what does this say about religion in the face of technology? Without meaning to, Howard's film gives a nod to the power of evolution and technological advancement, which pardon the pun, are nothing short of miraculous.

Citizen Slade.

"It doesn't matter what a man does with his life, what matters is the legend that grows up around him"
Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor) in "Velvet Goldmine".

If someone had told Orson Welles in 1941 that his "Citizen Kane" would be remade more than half a century later as an ode to glam rock, he probably wouldn't have believed it...or he would've loved the idea and endorsed it completely.
Todd Haynes' "Velvet Goldmine" is supposed to share only the narrative structure with Welles' masterpiece, but on a closer look, the film is a precise dissection of what many consider to be the greatest film ever made.
While the tag of tribute, reinterpretation or copy is subjective, truth of the matter is that Haynes owes to "Kane" much more than a backbone; and the beauty of "Goldmine" lies not only in watching how he touches a holy grail, but how his views reexamine the classic film and even help us watch it with different eyes as he "dares" to question Welles' choices.
"Kane" was written by Herman J. Mankiewicz and Welles after Mankiewicz came up with the idea of telling the life of a public figure through the eyes of those who knew him as opposed to traditional, chronological biographies.
They settled on media mogul William Randolph Hearst who for the screenplay became Charles Foster Kane: tycoon, womanizer, debaucher, greedy, insecure and madly ambitious.
The film, which begins with Kane's death, follows a reporter as he interviews people from his past including his former business manager (Joseph Cotten), his ex-wife (Dorothy Comingore) and some of his advisors in order to discover what his last words meant.
"Velvet Goldmine" also begins with a death, that of glam rocker Brian Slade, who at the height of his popularity stages his own demise, a fake one, but a death nevertheless (Although technically the film begins with Haynes introducing the idea that an other worldly Oscar Wilde was the first glam rocker).
Reporter Arthur Stewart (Christian Bale) is sent a decade later to investigate whatever happened to him after that event by interviewing people from his life, including his former business manager (Eddie Izzard), his ex-wife (Toni Collette) and former glam rock star Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor).
We first learn about Slade through a television show (Kane's life is revealed to us through a newsreel) and then the plot moves backwards as each character reveals a piece of his life.
It's widely known, or at least understood, that Slade is shaped after David Bowie (especially during his Ziggy Stardust era) while Curt is a hybrid between Iggy Pop and Kurt Cobain (think of him as a sensitive streaker).
So the first thing to ask ourselves is if this is a direct comparison between Hearst and Bowie, Kane and Slade, or if Haynes is simply finding equivalents in terms of influential power during different eras.
The individual cases might come off looking shallow, especially because they live up to being similar only in small, random details like the fact that both Kane and Slade marry flashy, trashy girls (who are later interviewed in the same fashion in the remnants of a bar) who have grown to become jaded women.
Neither film tries to hide the identity of the people who inspired them (note how they stress the words American and trailer park when Slade first sees Curt, as if to make clear it can't be other than Iggy), matters which were incendiary in terms of the fact that Hearst tried to destroy every copy of "Citizen Kane" and Bowie asked none of his songs to be featured in the film despite acknowledgment that this was a completely fictionalized version of a period in his life.
If there was nothing of the truth to be found in any of the films why would someone go to the lengths of trying to stop its release? Slade himself endorses activities of the kind when he says "Nothing makes one so vain as being told one is a sinner."
And for the filmmakers what truth was to be found in these stories?
"Kane" was supposedly a revenge against Hearst on part of Mankiewicz (after the tycoon stopped inviting him to his parties), Welles just played along for subversive fun's sake, but nothing in Haynes filmography or biography tells us that he had any special interest in Bowie or Iggy.
Curiously the effect is reversed in the histories of the narrators. The reporter investigating Kane remains anonymous throughout the film, we never even see his face, he's more of a device if anything; while Arthur Stewart not only was a fan of glam rock (fact which seems to embarrass him in the 80's) but was also emotionally involved with the movement so much that one of the film's most haunting scenes has him masturbate to a Brian Slade record cover as if it was a religious experience.
What difference does it make then how much we know about the subject we're investigating about? How do our perceptions and objectivity change when we have any emotional connections to our subject?
For the reporter in Kane, albeit fascinating, the mogul ends up being nothing more than an assignment. For Arthur on the other side, the investigation becomes the completion of a soul search he began decades before.
But in the end it's debatable if the reporters learn more about their subjects or about themselves.
On a stylistic level "Kane" is still unrivaled in terms of technical prowess (the only thing missing in it is CGI, but Welles probably was already machinating something similar in his mind), while "Goldmine" evokes the qualities of 60's and 70's filmmaking.
From Richard Lester to exploitation and quasi documentaries (technique which also proved effective in "Kane"), but perhaps the film is better known for its dazzling musical sequences, which like a loophole into the characters' minds and emotions, threads them to the rest of the narrative.
Watching "Velvet Goldmine" should feel like both the hangover and the drunkenness, its observations on hedonism as fascinated as they are opposed to it.
What's true is that both films concentrate on eras that had gone by, or would soon (Hearst died ten years after "Kane", same time that the characters in "Goldmine" take before they start investigating Slade) and both look at them as if to find relevance with the present and the future.
After all what is "Goldmine" other than a nostalgic take on artistic evolution?
For Haynes it's obvious that some of the best things have already been done and what better way to prove it than to use a classic film as model to talk about an almost vanished music genre?
Another of the issues to explore about "Kane" is how much of Welles was in Charles Foster Kane. From his upbringing to certain tics and specific details about his life, which lead you to ask why would he decide to create a hybrid of himself and someone he obviously didn't like that much?
Haynes isn't as notorious a character as Welles was, but one can guess that he must have put a little of himself into the characters. Then again he has Curt utter the line "a real artist creates beautiful things and puts nothing of his own life into it".
But maybe this is looking too much into things that are better left off as experiences. After all Haynes himself washes his hands, or triggers our imagination, when he quotes Nathan Brown in the fact that "meaning is not in things, but in between them".

- This post is part of "Musical of the Month" hosted by Nathaniel Rogers of "The Film Experience".

Cassandra's Dream ***

Director: Woody Allen
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell
Hayley Atwell, Sally Hawkins, Tom Wilkinson


Ian (McGregor) and Terry (Farrell) are two middle class brothers, living in South London, who are trying to achieve success through different means.
Terry works in a garage and makes money on the side by gambling, while Ian works in his father's (John Benfield) restaurant where he dates the waitresses and talks about all sorts of businesses he wants to invest in.
The brothers decide to buy a boat as a first step to achieve their ultimate goal of living the rich life.
Their mother (Clare Higgins) constantly reminds them of their uncle Howard (Wilkinson) her wealthy brother who has become the one image of success they must follow to the detriment and ego bruising of their father.
When uncle Howard comes to London he is willing to help them finance their dreams, if they can do one favor for him: commit a murder.
Returning to the operatic structure of "Match Point" Allen slowly builds his plot towards a crescendo from which there is no return.
He injects the film with a spirit of unease that has us looking twice at every action, like the moment where Ian meets the beautiful Angela (Hayley Atwell) who with her confession about wanting to be rescued can't prevent evoking an archetypical femme fatale.
The plot follows genre staples and creates moments of deeply affecting suspense highlighted by a darkly funny anguish and once again the British ensemble works wonders for Allen.
McGregor is remarkable; if he's been overusing his caddish qualities it's merely because he is great at it. The way Ian dresses and acts like a decadent playboy doesn't result as pathetic as it's heartbreaking.
Wilkinson is once again at the top of his game; during one rainy sequence with a few sentences he makes you believe he could convince you of practically anything.
And while the supporting players are magnificent, the film's true revelation is Colin Farrell who makes justice to all the James Dean comparisons he got at the start of his notorious career.
While Ian is like an Alfie, Terry is the complete opposite, mostly trying to stay out of the spotlight (in fact the camera rarely places him in the frame's center).
First you might assume the plot will revolve around his gambling problem, if only because that's the conception Farrell's public persona would lead to, but once he subtly begins to drive the attention away from him, he delivers a brilliant and unexpected performance.
Perhaps as the film's moral compass, his downward spiraling towards an unforeseeable underworld needs no Greek chorus to convey its full power.
Extracting his themes from film noir and pure Greek tragedy (most notably Medea) Allen can't help but pay tribute to the sources that made him such a masterful filmmaker and even when he's revisiting themes which he's explored more complexly in the past, "Cassandra's Dream" comes off looking less obsessive and more like the bittersweet reaffirmation of someone who has travelled down the dark path of humanity too many times and perhaps can't conceive a more hopeful outcome.