Cassandra's Dream

In Cassandra's Dream (2007) writer-director Woody Allen aims for something along the lines of Greek tragedy in the modern world: Two brothers (Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell) are hired by their rich uncle (Tom Wilkinson) to rub out one of his business associates who's going to testify in court against some apparently damning illegal activity. But the consequences are far graver than they imagined.


A feeling of dread comes over you about midway, when the brothers' choices start to develop into their repercussions. McGregor's character, Ian, becomes corrupted (almost entirely but not quite) by his own ambitions, and Farrell's, Terry, begins to fall apart because he can't live with the guilt, and moreover, the sense that he has upset some kind of moral balance for which he must atone.

Cassandra's Dream makes a point of giving us an insightful look into human drama, the irony of life. Ian's girlfriend (Hayley Atwell) is an actress, and once while she's performing on stage, her character says this, that life is ironic. Of course the play is not accidentally talking about the theme which runs throughout this movie, and of course the reference to the Greek character Cassandra is important as well. But I'm wondering at what cost.

This movie was just depressing. The performances are all delivered by competent, effective actors. Sally Hawkins is remarkable as Farrell's girlfriend Kate. Farrel; may resort to the same tricks to convey his angst (twisting his face, raising his voice up an octive, all the things that made him really stand out in In Bruges), but he's good. Surely no actor was better when looking panicked and guilty.
 You feel for Terry much more than Ian, McGregor's character.

McGregor maintains his usual level of poise and self-assurance. I'm not sure exactly, but I believe one of the reasons I enjoy Ewan McGregor is for his banality. There's something consistently measured, controlled, calculated, in his performances. He's always a calming agent, and this makes for a contrast and a foil to Terry's weak, unstable constitution.

But the movie doesn't give you much enjoyment for all its important-ness and its references to stock literary conceits and characters. It's too much like life to be an entertainment. How long can you admire good acting when you're depressed, and part of you regrets starting the movie in the first place because you were in the mood for something else? Woody Allen is certainly not expected to confine himself to romantic comedies (his comedies have always been so much darker anyway, dwelling on the ironies of life as they do), but in the case of Cassandra's Dream, I felt ready for it to be over well before it was.

Submarine

Richard Ayoade's Submarine (2011) is a coming-of-age story about Oliver Tate, a 15-ish year old boy growing up in Wales. Oliver fancies himself the hero in the story of his life. He narrates the movie, which is divided, with tongue in cheek, into sections. Oliver's grand view of his own middle-class adolescent life is made a spectacle on the screen, but not for schadenfreude. We laugh with him rather than at him, because we identify with him and his idiosyncrasies. We're also keenly aware that he is like us. He's our underdog imported from the UK. He gets beat up at school, when he refuses to publicly proclaim the bully's ex-girlfriend a slut, and his valiant act of chivalry wins him over to us. So his grand, inflated perception of his life is charmingly quixotic. And yet he's not out of his head. He seems aware of reality, perhaps more conditioned and adjusted to it than most. He also tries to fix things. He isn't given over to cynicism, just perceptiveness.

The movie's visual playfulness (lots of cutting back and forth and cinematographic tricks that are deliberately maneuvered to get our attention) is in fact a part of its deadpan humoristic style. It has the look of those so-called important foreign films that fiddle with the camera and the editing more than mainstream American movies do. It doesn't look experimental, but it's offbeat enough to be noticeable--and even refreshing. It reminded me ever so slightly of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, except Submarine has infinitely more narrative drive. It's also a lot funnier. Without a sense of humor this movie would have been dreadfully heavy-handed.

Oliver's coming-of-age results from two important events: The girl for whom he incurred a punch in the nose becomes his girlfriend, his mom starts flirting with the wacky mystic living next door. (We find out later that he was her first love, so Mom is experiencing a nostalgic kick, exacerbated by the now sterile relationship with her practically comatose husband, who's a marine biology nut). Oliver's girlfriend introduces a lot of new adult feelings, from lust to grief (her mother has cancer). He's tormented also by the threat of his own parents splitting up. And the sort of off-kilter, mildly annoyed relationship he has with them turns out to be more important to him than he realized before. Ultimately, Submarine's villain isn't the bully or the cheating mother, but Blandness. Oliver sees nothing around him but banality. That's the reason his mother starts flirting with the kooky Ninja next door (who gives seminars on translucency or transcendence or some other such nonsense).

The actor who plays Oliver, Craig Roberts, approaches the part with a deadpan facial expression that belies a certain passion for living, one that is awakened by the events that unfold throughout the movie. He seems to walk through his life--and this movie--in a dreamlike state, but he's attuned to the dream and its visceral impact on his senses. And he's such a deeply layered character that you know there are whole other stories to be told about him and through his eyes. And he's wonderfully funny, too.

The movie has that sense of triviality that so many of the independent films seem to relish. They're not the grand Tennessee Williams-style dramas that Hollywood used to roll out every year, in CinemaScope. Those factory-made family sideshows are entertaining in their glossy campiness. And we may think that we have grown past them in our movie tastes, but that kind of high camp drama lives on today in just about every dramatic television show on the air. Movies like Submarine seem almost slight in their movement away from the grandiose. It's a lovely little film, though.

Submarine opened tonight at 5 Points Theatre. It will be playing through July 28. Also starring Noah Taylor, Paddy Considine, Yasmin Paige, Sally Hawkins, and Darren Evans.