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Woody Allen's 'Cassandra's Dream' takes a walk on the 'dark side'
2007-09-02
Woody Allen on Sunday premieres "Cassandra's Dream," a tragedy with farcical elements involving two brothers who get in over their heads thanks to the machinations of their wealthy uncle. "I've always been interested in murder and the dark side of drama," Allen told a news conference. "Murder and guilt are classic ingredients of drama ... and murder is one of the tools that playwrights and filmmakers have used for centuries." The uncle, played by Tom Wilkinson, gets the brothers (Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor), on board for the murder plot, preying on their weaknesses, one for a woman and the other for gambling. Guilt -- both comic and pathetic -- enters the mix to deepen the tragedy. "I've always worked with guilt. It's a subject that lends itself to both sides of the coin," whether comic or tragic, said the creator of such guilt-ridden films as "Annie Hall," "Crimes and Misdemeanours" and "Match Point." "Life itself -- no brilliant observation -- is a tremendously tragic event, I mean a real mess, but it has its comic moments," he added. Murder is also centre stage in the premiere Sunday of "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" with Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck. The blockbuster outlaw flick explores the complex relationship between the charismatic outlaw and his admirer turned traitor in what New Zealand director Andrew Dominik calls "a poetic meditation on a murder and its consequences." A snivelling Affleck as Robert Ford gives fear every dimension possible in the scenic piece, while Pitt manages some humility along with the bravado. The selections mark a sharp change of mood from the last two days of the festival, which were dominated by two films on the Iraq war. On Saturday, Academy Award-winning Canadian director Paul Haggis unveiled "In the Valley of Elah", showing the harrowing toll the war is taking on returning US soldiers. It came just a day after "Redacted", Brian De Palma's dramatisation laying out the shocking facts of a rape and multiple murder in Iraq for which Private First Class Jesse Spielman was sentenced last month to 110 years in prison. Both films explore the conditions, attitudes and stresses experienced by US soldiers in Iraq and both directors said they felt the US public was being kept in the dark about the war. "During Vietnam we had terrific journalists doing their job," Haggis said. "We were seeing it on television. Now we don't have it." In his film, Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon play the parents of a soldier who goes missing shortly after returning from Iraq. The father's search for their son, aided by a feisty police detective played by Charlize Theron, turns into a murder mystery that slowly uncovers hard truths about the Iraq war and its traumatising effects on US soldiers. In discovering the brutality of which his son was capable, Jones' character, a former military MP, has to upturn long-held beliefs. Haggis -- whose movie "Crash" won the best picture Oscar last year -- said he wanted the film to be "political but not partisan," noting that he wrote it "through the eyes of a very proud American who believes he knows -- who knows right from wrong." De Palma said: "All the images we have of our war are completely constructed -- whitewashed, redacted. One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to get their congressmen to vote against the war." Saturday's lineup also included British director Ken Loach's "It's a Free World", about a young woman, Angie, who gets sacked from an employment agency and decides to set up one of her own along with her flatmate Rosie. Set in a down-and-out section of London plagued by gangs and full of job-hungry migrants, the film paints a dual portrait of determination and desperation. Angie starts out making a better life for herself with apparent empathy for the workers, but greed catches up with her. Loach said the exploitation of poor immigrants is not a mere "force of nature" resulting from globalisation. "It's important that we don't let them get away with this, that some people have to be exploited and others get extremely rich."
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