Thursday, June 19, 2008

Cassandra's dream


Like other Woody Allen' s movie in the same genre, Cassandra's dream has an ending that will not be digested by the majority, as it ends on a note which is not only against to the expectations of the audience but also against the code of karma, that most of us believe in. I don't want to give away the ending of the movie but just want to give an idea about the world that this movie lives in.

May be this not as good as the other movies that belong to the same style from Woody allen, but it is definitely not bad as most of the reviews that I read about this one. The other movies that I am talking about are "Crimes and misdemeanors" and "Match point", which are certainly much better than this one. Let me give out an outline on all these movies.

The movie has a central character or characters in this case, who get an entangled in an financial/personal issue and in order to get out of it unscathed, they have take an extreme action, may be taking a human life. The common factor in all the three movies is that the central character is not a monster. He is just another human being who is selfish like most of us are. He commits the crime and later repents like you would expect from any other person who is not completely stone hearted. The same theme in the hands of a lesser director would have been about the way the crime is committed, reducing the movie to a normal hollywood thriller. But Woody allen makes it much more interesting. It is not about the way the crime is committed but how the central character comes to terms with life after he commits that crime.

He is not chased by the law. He family doesn't have a clue that he murdered a person. The only thing he needs to face is himself and his conscience. Will this crime haunt him for the rest of his life or will he continue leading the rest of his life peacefully as if nothing has ever happened?? I don't want to sound like the guy who writes the movie descriptions on the back of the DVD cover, but these are precise questions that these movies made me think about.

The best one of the three in my opinion is "Crimes and misdemeanors" and this movie might be the weakest. Weak, only because of 3-4 scenes that are utterly unconvincing. Apart from that , the movie is quite good.

No comments: