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Throughout his career, Woody Allen has had somewhat of a prophetic voice in Hollywood. Though his own theological convictions are ambiguous at best, Allen works with theological categories, which for the most part have been completely absent in modern cinema. In his latest film, 2007's Cassandra's Dream starring Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell, I was struck by the fact that there was a God-referential sense in which the characters acted. While by and large panned by critics, the film tells the story of two brothers in financial trouble who are offered an opportunity to get out of their situation if they murder a personal enemy of their rich uncle. To a certain extent I can understand the reasons why the film was panned (some poor over-acting, a simplistic story, mis-casting, and it was a bit morality play-ish), yet I walked away feeling as if I just sat through a modern-day Hitchcock.
In dealing with the existential crisis of murdering another human being, despite the brothers having no concept of God, the character played by Colin Farrell is haunted by the idea that this life may not be all that there is. What if the God who he has never believed in actually exists and there will be judgment to face when he dies? For the amount of films dealing with the subject matter of murder, the fact that Cassandra's Dream at least offered the idea that there may be a God of wrath upset with murder came as a breath of fresh air.
To use another film as contrasting example, last year's No Country For Old Men (NCFOM) had one of the most chilling villain's in years, brutally murdering people with a cattle gun. While the two films ultimately can't be compared from an artistic standpoint (in my opinion NCFOM was probably the best movie in the last 10 years) there was no sense of a just God who just might exist and one day make things right. One of the overarching themes of NCFOM was the banality of evil (especially murder), but you have to ask if this also plays into one of the overarching themes of society at large, the banality of human existence. Woody Allen, throughout his career has at least offered the possibility that there just might be a God after all. Because of this, he offers us the category of sin. The idea that murder is more than just mean and cruel because it interrupts my pursuit of personal happiness and pleasure but also violates the law of God is a category missing in modern films. This isn't a category that has always been missing in film though, one only has to put on Hitchcock or (even better) Westerns and realize that other cinematic killers have one day feared the concept of a God who says "vengeance is mine."
Casandra's Dream may not be a great movie, but at least through some over written dialogue and mediocre acting it conveys a message larger than its story.
