Cinema Review: Perfect Sense
Ewan McGregor and Eva Green take leave of their senses in this apocalyptic romance.
Ewan McGregor and Eva Green take leave of their senses in this apocalyptic romance.
For all its flaws, it is to be recommended as a mature, well-crafted piece of cinematic spin.
Art in the imitation of life has fascinated man since the first cave dweller illustrated life-sustaining animals on walls. This fascination with understanding and depicting our moments on earth has become the drive behind art and film historical studies – disciplines effective in carrying important subtexts about humanity’s past and present. Critical dissection of these subtexts is crucial to understanding the reflexive nature of artistic vision. We live in a time of terror and film is likewise conscious of this fact. Representations of grief, war, and struggle take on new meaning under the dictates of current world events. What messages are these films sending to the viewers asking for thrills and entertainment? Some films are perhaps more sinister in their coding than we would like to believe while others make no effort to hide their intentions. Incendiary is a film without shadows, yet its darkness and its seemly implausible and morally conflicted plot reflect an excruciatingly personal element of our current human struggle.
In Woody Allen’s most recent film, Cassandra’s Dream, Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell play two working-class London brothers. McGregor is Ian, the smart one, who works in their father’s restaurant while dreaming of a better life, and Farrell is Terry, a former potential sports star, who now works in a garage and is addicted to gambling. When Ian’s relationship with an actress (played by Hayley Atwell) brings his ambitions up a notch, and Terry’s gambling leaves him in serious debt, they go to their well-to-do Uncle Howard (played by Tom Wilkinson) to, effectively, beg for money. Uncle Howard is perfectly willing to help, on the condition that they kill a man whose testimony could put him in prison.