Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters culminates with a warm and fuzzy Thanksgiving dinner scene where all the relationship problems plaguing the angst-ridden characters in the film are happily resolved and familial ties are reaffirmed; a tiny beam of light in Allen’s dark and bleak tunnel of life. But ever since then, he has been renouncing a happy ending for every film he has made.

Cassandra’s Dream, Allen’s 42nd film as writer/director, is his most grim and uncomfortable film to date, surpassing even Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point. At least in those two films, the upper class criminals get away with their deeds and get on with their lives (however psychically diminished those lives may be). Not so in Cassandra’s Dream, where two lower-middle-class brothers commit a dark crime that not only shatters their humanity but also destroys their family ties and much more.

Terry (Colin Farrell) and Ian (Ewan McGregor) are two brothers sick of their lives and who want something better. Terry is a dull-witted auto mechanic prone to gambling and booze who wants to own a sporting goods store. Ian pretends to be something he is not, driving around in borrowed vintage cars repaired by Terry and claiming to be a real estate investor; he actually works as a manager in his father’s downscale restaurant.

When Terry wins big at the dog races (betting on a dog named Cassandra’s Dream – Cassandra also being the name of a Greek mythological prognosticator of bad events) the brothers buy a boat and see this as a sign that their lives will change. Their rich Uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) arrives for a visit, and Terry and Ian decide to ask him for money to bankroll their dreams. Uncle Howard agrees to help them but at a cost neither of the brothers could have anticipated. All in the name of family.

Allen directs with the ease of a master, filling his trademarked one-take scenes with tight compositions, constricting both the players and the audience in an airless, doom-laden atmosphere. Vilmos Zsigmond’s drab and dank cinematography and Philip Glass’s unsettling score further enhance Allen’s directorial touchstones. Allen doesn’t loosen his chokehold for a moment and even though there are moments of dark humour, the lines stick in your craw, and he makes his audience twist in the wind.

The older Allen gets, the more curdled his world view becomes – more depressing, more bitter, more hopeless. Lately, his nihilistic perception of human nature and life traps his films in a hermetic box of woe. In Cassandra’s Dream, death and emptiness have engulfed his spirit.

Allen can still direct a tightly constructed, concise film of meaning and emotion, but the purchase of a ticket to see this film should come complete with a loaded revolver.

Paul Brenner