Every Wednesday, FM writers Simon Columb and Brogan Morris write two short reviews on Woody Allen films … in the hope of watching all his films over the course of roughly 49 weeks. If you have been watching Woody’s films and want to join in, feel free to comment with short reviews yourself! Next up is Cassandra’s Dream and Shadows and Fog…
Simon Columb on Cassandra’s Dream…
Social status is rarely explicit in Allen’s films. Upper-class New Yorkers philosophising about life is more down his street, and placing characters in the top rungs of society mean relationships and death are the only things worth thinking about. Set within the cloudy and rain-sodden streets of London, Cassandra’s Dream bucks the trend as brothers Ian (Ewan McGregor) – a restaurant-owner – and Terry (Colin Farrell) – a content car-mechanic – turn to their mysterious Uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) for money. Ian and Terry just need to kill someone for Uncle Howard and the money is theirs. Allen’s trademark cynicism and insight gives food for thought but it doesn’t make up for the lack of urgency in such a steady-paced film. The family dynamics toys with relationships between fathers and sons – and envy and expectation. Underrated, Cassandra’s Dream may not be his best – but it introduces a class attitude we have rarely seen before.
Brogan Morris on Shadows and Fog…
The title of Woody Allen’s twenty-first feature is perfect. For Woody, man of intellectual pursuits, Shadows and Fog is an exercise in recreating both the shady visual style of German Expressionist cinema and the murky complexity of Kafka. The blatant pastiche doesn’t act as a weight on the film itself – he’s imitating, but Allen makes his movie a beautiful black and ghostly-white art work, while the Kafka influence lends Allen a new platform via which to air his neuroses. As characters intersect in random encounters (John Cusack revealing to John Malkovich that he’s just paid his wife for sex is an unexpected joy to behold), questions of love, mortality, spirituality and God swirl around Shadows and Fog. Regrettably, the wildly inappropriate happy ending topples the film and its parodically nihilistic tone, but the first hour and twenty minutes sees Allen thrillingly set his comedy alongside more cerebral fixations.
Brogan Morris – Lover of film, writer of words, pretentious beyond belief. Thinks Scorsese and Kubrick are the kings of cinema, but PT Anderson and David Fincher are the young princes. Follow Brogan on Twitter if you can take shameless self-promotion.
Originally published September 11, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
