Cassandra's Dream
Theatrical release poster
Directed byWoody Allen
Written byWoody Allen
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyVilmos Zsigmond
Edited byAlisa Lepselter
Music byPhilip Glass
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release dates
  • 18 June 2007 (2007-06-18) (Avilés premiere)
  • 31 October 2007 (2007-10-31) (France)
  • 18 January 2008 (2008-01-18) (United States)
  • 23 May 2008 (2008-05-23) (United Kingdom)
Running time
108 minutes
Countries
  • United States
  • France
  • United Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
Box office$22.7 million[1]

Cassandra's Dream is a 2007 crime thriller drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. Shot in England, the film is a co-production between the United States, France, and the United Kingdom.

The film premiered in secret in Avilés, Spain, on 18 June 2007.[2] It officially premiered at the 64th Venice International Film Festival on 2 September 2007 and was already in theaters in Spain by 3 November.[3] The film had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 2007.[4] Cassandra's Dream was released theatrically in France on 31 October 2007,[5] in the United States on 18 January 2008,[6] and in the United Kingdom on 23 May 2008.[7]

Plot

Brothers Terry and Ian, who live in South London, were raised by their father, Brian, who runs a restaurant, and their mother, Dorothy, who taught her sons to look up to their uncle Howard, a successful plastic surgeon and businessman. He has opened clinics in Switzerland, the United States and, more recently, in China.

The brothers buy a sailboat at a low price, despite its near pristine condition. They name it Cassandra's Dream, after a greyhound that won Terry the money to buy the boat.

While driving home from a day's sailing in a borrowed car, Ian crosses paths with actress Angela Stark, with whom he becomes infatuated. After noticing her car has broken down, he stops to help her fix it. As a way to thank him, she gifts Ian with tickets to the play she is performing at. After he attends the play, and despite Angela already having a lover, she and Ian start dating.

Terry has a gambling addiction that sinks him deeper in debt. Ian wishes to invest in hotels in California to finance a new life with Angela. To overcome their financial problems, they decide to ask Howard for help. When Howard returns from a business trip in China, he agrees to help them, but asks for a favor in return: they must murder a man named Martin Burns. Howard faces imprisonment for unspecified crimes and his future is threatened by Burns, a former business partner who plans to testify against him. Howard asks his nephews to get rid of Burns, and in return he will reward them financially. After initial reluctance, the brothers agree.

In the ensuing days before the murder, while trying to come up with a plan, Ian fears Angela is sleeping with other people. He promises to give her a life in Hollywood if they treat the relationship as a serious, exclusive thing. To kill Martin, Ian and Terry eventually decide to make zip guns, untraceable and easily destroyed. Lying in wait in Burns' home, their plan is foiled when he arrives with a woman. Their resolve shaken, they leave and agree to commit the murder the next day.

The next day, after Martin visits her mother, Terry and Ian follow him and succeed in carrying out the murder. They later destroy the guns. Ian is content to move on as if nothing happened, but Terry is consumed by guilt and begins abusing alcohol and other drugs. His behavior frightens his fiancée, who tells Ian about the situation, saying that Terry believes he has killed someone. After Terry confides that he wants to turn himself in to the police, Ian goes to Howard for advice. They agree there is no alternative but to get rid of Terry. Ian plans to poison Terry during an outing on the boat. Unable to bring himself to kill his own brother, Ian attacks him in a fit of rage. In the chaos, Terry knocks Ian down the steps into the cabin, killing him.

The boat is later discovered adrift by the police, who deduce that Terry killed Ian and then drowned himself. Cassandra's Dream remains in beautiful condition despite everything that happened.

Cast

Soundtrack

This is the first Woody Allen film since Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) to have an original score commissioned for it. The score was composed by Philip Glass.

It was also his first film released with a stereo soundtrack. Allen previously eschewed stereo although often employing Dolby Stereo and Dolby Digital technologies to convey a higher quality mono soundtrack. The film is stereo for its music only.

Critical response

The film received mixed reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 46% based on 118 reviews, with an average rating of 5.6/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Colin Farrell and Tom Wilkinson act up a storm in Cassandra's Dream, but Woody Allen's heavy-handed symbolism and foreshadowing drains the plot of all tension."[8] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 49 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[9]

Manohla Dargis commended the film in her review for The New York Times. Although offering criticism such as the film feeling "too lightly polished and often rushed, as if he had directed it with a stopwatch," she suggests that Allen's film "is good enough that you may wonder why he doesn't just stop making comedies once and for all."[10] Roger Ebert compared the film negatively to Sidney Lumet's similarly themed Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, adding: "The Lumet film uses actors who don't look like brothers but feel like brothers. Allen's actors look like brothers but don't really feel related." He rated the film two out of four stars, and noted that Allen's previous film Match Point presented the material more effectively.[11]

Damon Wise of Empire magazine concluded that Cassandra's Dream was "[a] clumsy, clichéd morality play that may actually represent the lowest point of Allen's recently chequered career."[12] Paul Jordan also compared the film to a morality play—but considered that praise: "Allen gets past the guard of a modern audience which would not have taken seriously the appearance of a Mephistopheles or an Old Scratch. Uncle Howard is a chilling 21st Century Tempter, fulfilling the heart's desire in return for murder and leading his nephews to terrible perdition."[13]

In his "Best of the Decade" article, New Yorker critic Richard Brody called Cassandra's Dream one of the best films of the 2000s: "Few aging directors so cogently and relentlessly depict the grimly destructive machinery of life, and every time the word 'family' is uttered, the screws tighten just a little more."[14]

In 2016, film critics Robbie Collin and Tim Robey ranked Cassandra's Dream as one of the worst films by Allen.[15]

References

  1. ↑ "Cassandra's Dream (2007)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 16 August 2023.
  2. ↑ "Spanish town beats Venice to Woody Allen premiere". Hürriyet Daily News. 21 June 2007. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 22 July 2012 – via Reuters.
  3. ↑ "Cassandra's Dream (2007) – Release dates". IMDb. Archived from the original on 18 May 2007. Retrieved 7 April 2007.
  4. ↑ "TIFF '07 – Films and Schedules Cassandra's Dream". Toronto International Film Festival. Archived from the original on 31 October 2007.
  5. ↑ "Le Rêve de Cassandre". AlloCiné (in French). Retrieved 16 August 2023.
  6. ↑ Kirschling, Gregory (17 January 2008). "Ewan McGregor's new 'Dream'". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 16 August 2023.
  7. ↑ Dessau, Bruce (19 May 2008). "Woody could be back". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 August 2023.
  8. ↑ "Cassandra's Dream". Rotten Tomatoes. 18 January 2008. Retrieved 19 April 2023.
  9. ↑ "Cassandra's Dream Reviews". Metacritic. Retrieved 19 April 2023.
  10. ↑ Dargis, Manohla (18 January 2008). "Movie Review - Cassandra's Dream (2007)". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 18 June 2013. Retrieved 6 February 2017.
  11. ↑ Ebert, Roger (17 January 2008). "Never name a boat 'Cassandra' unless you know who she was". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on 23 August 2015. Retrieved 3 August 2015 – via RogerEbert.com.
  12. ↑ Wise, Damon (21 April 2007). "Cassandra's Dream". Empire. Archived from the original on 20 December 2013. Retrieved 19 April 2023.
  13. ↑ Paul Jordan, "Persistent Myths," p. 17
  14. ↑ Brody, Richard (30 November 2009). "Best of the Decade". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 4 December 2009. Retrieved 9 December 2009.
  15. ↑ Collin, Robbie; Robey, Tim (12 October 2016). "All 47 Woody Allen movies – ranked from worst to best". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 18 January 2021. Retrieved 12 February 2017.
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