Chances are, that even if you don’t know the whole Greek story, you will have heard of Cassandra. A princess who was cursed by a God, she is doomed to foresee the truth but never to be believed. She foretold the fall of her home – the city of Troy. She even foretold her capture and eventual murder.
While Cassandra herself has been largely absent from films, her power and curse are used endlessly. In Scream 2 the reference is overt: Sidney plays Cassandra in a school staging, echoing her own belief that her ordeal is not over. More recently, Orphan and We Need to Talk About Kevin features female protagonists who are powerless to prevent the evil that they see within their households. Throughout filmic history (Rosemary’s Baby comes to mind, and even Alien) the figure of the doubted female prophet recurs.
Why is she so compelling, and how do we use her in film? Well, Cassandra’s a fabulous heroine because as an audience we can immediately root for her. She sees what we see – that something is going to go horribly wrong. So we empathise with her as she tries to convince those around her, and when she can finally say ‘I told you so’, it’s as if we’re saying it to the disbelievers too. On a simpler level, the Cassandra figure is inevitably fairly clever but not that powerful, which makes us like her immediately – she’s worthy of our time, but she’s still an underdog.
Unlike the myth, in film Cassandra usually survives. This is because she symbolises justice. She alone has seen the truth. This makes her a perfect protagonist for horrors and thrillers, where justice usually wins out. The truth-tellers survive in these genres, and there is no more powerful truth-teller than Cassandra.
But there are pitfalls to using this trope in films. She can come across as being passive, and her likeability can be compromised by her rigid morality. It can also be implausible when others don’t believe her, particularly when those others are close family members who should trust her. If you can overcome these obstacles, though, then the Cassandra figure can provide a really powerful moral compass and a compelling heroine.