A Robert Altman Home Companion

We all love giving labels. It helps in pigeon-holing that which can/should not be pigeon-holed. The label that probably fits Robert Altman to a T is probably that he is the one American director who will not be seriously considered to be the best of American directors, but one who will still be in consideration. Over five decades of incredibly prolific film-making, he has achieved hits and misses – almost in equal measure. But the hits will still be heads and shoulders among best of the rest. 

Too often he is dismissed as the director with a particular trademark, that of overpopulating his movies with characters and getting them all to talk at the same time. It may or may not be a gimmick and it does frustrate at times, but Altman’s talent and fearlessness to straddle genres cannot be dismissed with any label.

I decided to have a Robert Altman weekend, spend watching a handful of his best works. And in typical Altman style it didn’t finish in a weekend and stretched to more. Here we go, in no particular order.

McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971) 

The best way to describe this movie would still be what Altman himself called it – an anti-Western. It is set in the period where Westerns usually take place and then proceeds to act like how real people would have, had they been in that period.

It is at the turn of the last century. In a small town called Presbyterian Church, with a population of a few hundred, arrives John McCabe (Warren Beatty). McCabe is an entrepreneur in that he wants to get rich by the fastest possible means. He gambles, does not correct rumours that he is a gangster and generally gets by on his charisma. His great plan to make money in the town that is slowly growing is to go to the neighbouring town and get three prostitutes to service the town’s builderfolk and to expand his wallet.

Things seem to be going well until a caravan brings a lady, Mrs Miller, who tells him that she could run the business much more profitably if they became partners. They do, and Mrs Miller brings her girls and insists all the customers should first take a bath at their adjoining bathhouse, at a rate, of course. The dual income works. 

The money continues to flow in until big business in the form of Harrison Shaughnessy, a mining consortium that wanted to buy up the business. McCabe is not against selling, but he wants to hold out for more, despite Mrs Miller warning him not to. He goes too far and, as was the case in those times (or so I think), the company decided to take the cheaper option of just killing McCabe and taking over the business. Three gunman land in Presbyterian Church and it’s time for the final shootout.

Westerns were meant to be fun. Lots of shooting, some dead people (mostly Red Indians) and a high noon shootout where the loner hero didn’t miss. McCabe and Mrs Miller begins with dirt. How the period, the terrain and the weather made everything dirty. Moreover, the lead character was nothing short of a cowardly pimp. Right till the end, he was trying to escape his fate. The heroine is a guiltless brothel madam with an opium addiction. The hero falls for the girl and she doesn’t reciprocate. Instead she insists on taking money from him. Every time. 

Warren Beatty and Julie Christie dig deep into their talent and come up with extremely un-starry performances. The cinematography is excellent without seeming like National Geographic. Going at a leisurely pace towards its unexpected, yet inevitable conclusion, McCabe and Miller will remain the Western that excelled by being unlike any Western. 

MASH (1970)

Any movie that has its theme song titled “Suicide is Painless” is going to pull me in! I mean, come on! Legend has it that Altman wanted to write a really stupid song, but couldn’t make the lyrics stupid enough, he being Robert Altman and all. So he asked his 14-year-old son Mike to do it. Guess who made more money. 

MASH stood for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, the unit that took care of the wounded in the Korean War. Unlike the brave doctors and nurses who would put themselves in war zones to take care of the soldiers our fighting, our antiheroes Captains ‘Hawkeye’ Pierce (Donald Sutherland), Trapper McIntyre (Elliot Gould) and Duke Forrest (Tom Skerrit) sit around chasing skirt, playing pranks and generally being insufferable. Alongside the war goes on.

MASH was never about the war. It was about the effects of war on those on the sidelines, but it a broad black comic way. The success of the movie, and the TV series it inspired, show that it did achieve what it set out to. Unfortunately for me, I am not one of the fans.

Altman has mentioned that the source novel by Ring Lardner Jr. was quite racist. I happen to think the movie was ridiculously misogynistic. The few women characters were either there for sex or to enable one of the leading trio’s dastardly plans. 

Without too much of a narrative thread, the movie progresses as a series of skits. The horrors of war are shown, but it is muted considering the tone is black comedy. There is a very serious and hard-hitting film in there somewhere, and I want to see it. But MASH is not that film.

The Long Goodbye (1973)

This is Altman’s foray into noir and, boy, does he delight in breaking down those walls. 

Philip Marlowe (Elliot Gould) is a hard-drinking, chain-smoking private eye who lives alone with his cat. One night his best friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouten) arrives at his apartment with a request to be driven to the Mexican border. Marlowe agrees but soon the cops come calling as Terry’s wife, Sylvia was found murdered. Marlowe doesn’t think Terry is guilty, only no one believes him. But when Terry ends up dead in Mexico, he has to move on. 

He gets hired by the wife of an alcoholic novelist who wants him to find her husband. Mission soon accomplished, but soon more skeletons start tumbling out.

Altman keeps to the basic rules of a whodunit, while breaking away at the edges. Marlowe is the only smoker in a health-conscious California. His neighbours are a bunch of young things who are into yoga. While being naked. There is also a small matter of a gangster and his cash. The private eye is anything but cool. He is just a regular guy, but with a decent strand running through him.

The action is sparse and there is no glorification of violence. The humour is understated and the acting, other than Gould, is quite theatrical. But this is a movie that will stay with you. The character Philip Marlowe has been played on screen by Humphrey Bogart, Robert Mitchum and Robert Downey Jr, among others. But rarely has he been stripped down like this. 

Postscript: Take a look at the picture. The beefcake in the centre, yup, it is you-know-who. Uncredited!

The Player (1992)

Hollywood and narcissism go hand in glove. So much so that Hollywood loves its narcissism being put out there and dissected. And you will find few such striking surgical pieces as The Player. 

Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is a studio executive. He listens to pitches from writers and selects around 12 from 50,000. He is the cynosure of all eyes and his success was envied by all. But things are not all that rosy. Griffin starts to get threatening letters from a disgruntled writer. A rival executive Larry (Peter Gallagher) starts climbing up the ropes. His relationship with story editor Bonnie (Cynthia Stephenson) is on the rocks, especially when Icelandic beauty June (Greta Scacchi) arrives on the horizon. Is there hope still for Griffin?

The Player is a mild satire, said Altman, offending no one. I beg to differ. This is quite biting satire. Why the targeted people are not offended is because they consider it to be a badge of honour. With a slightly exaggerated approach, Altman parades the Hollywood studio culture in all its shamelessness. The ending is so perfect that we wonder how else it could possibly have ended. Tim Robins has never received the credit he deserves. He does sleazy in such style that we don’t realise that it is sleaze. The million or so cameos just add to the grand take-down.

Gosford Park (2001)

Otherwise known as Altman does Agatha Christie. Once again, Robert Altman dabbles in a new genre. This time, surprisingly, it is a whodunit set in a British upper-class country home. Unlike, his other genre-deconstructing efforts, here Altman pulls a fast one by going straight. With a great script by Julian Fellowes, till then a secondary actor, Altman brings us the class machinations in a decaying British manor with the story being told both amongst the wealthy guests and the servants. 

Sometime between the two World Wars, a bunch of wealthy and soon-to-be-destitute upper class folk arrive for a weekend shooting party. While the rich have their own crosses to bear, the servants have their very own class system, depending on how high in the class hierarchy their masters and mistresses are. The despicable host, Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon), is soon murdered. Turns out he was poisoned and stabbed. But the bumbling Inspector Thompson (Stephen Fry) does not think it pertinent. It is left to Mary (Kelly Macdonald), a lady’s maid to find out what really happened. 

Long before the Harry Potter movies, Altman assembled a veritable who’s-who in English cinema to star in Gosford Park. Besides the above-mentioned there is Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Kristin Scott Thomas, Emily Watson, Tom Hollander and Clive Owen, among others. The production design is excellent and Altman uses it to convey a sense of theatricality in the sad lives of these people. The class disparity and the acceptance of it shows why the Empire finally died out.

God's Own Cinema?

When I was growing up Malayalam cinema was something that inspired awe among cineastes from other parts of the country. Not just because we had an Adoor and an Aravindan, but because the standard of popular cinema was abnormally high and the Malayalam audience were quite discerning. The actors and technicians were slaves to their craft and mindless cinema didn’t quite exist. (There was also another Malayalam cinema that was the toast of teenagers with raging hormones across the country. But this is not about that!)

Then things changed. A breed of lazy, misogynist filmmakers decided that aging actors shouting bombastic one-liners and aping Rajni’s fight sequences was the new mantra to success. It lasted more years than it should have. I moved away almost completely from Malayalam cinema. My rare visits to the home town would always include a visit to DVD shops, but that was to check if any new CDs had come out, of cinema created by MT and Padmarajan.

Recently, however, the youth are striking back. Bless them! There is a tsunami of young fearless filmmakers all out to tell their stories in their own way.  They favour a realistic style as opposed to the theatrical. They are eager to try new faces and they want actors and not stars. A decade later people will start talking about this as the Malayalam New Wave.  I was aware of this, but too immersed in the Golden Age of Television. My loss, as I am discovering.

With a New Year and a resolution I am quite hell-bent on keeping, I asked a filmmaker friend for a list, got most of them and started watching one a day. Here’s my first set.


Anuragha Karikkin Vellam (Director: Khalid Rahman)

There are two love stories in Vellam. The first is that of Abhi (Asif Ali) and Eli (Rajisha Vijayan). The two are already a couple when the movie starts and gradually you see a falling-out-of-love story. The other is that of Raghu (Biju Menon) and his Suma (Asha Sharath). The two have been married for many years and have a ho hum existence, barely acknowledging each other. And their falling-back-into-love story is one of the most mature portrayals of adult love I have seen in a long time, despite (or, maybe, because of) director Khalid not spending too much screen time on them.

Abhi is a struggling architect who works with a white boss (Tom Alter in a Laurie Baker homage) designing low-cost housing for the poor. He dreams of moving to the big league, but this is life and not movies. He has a long-time girlfriend Eli who he feels is too clingy but he can’t summon the nerve to break up with her. His dad, Raghu, is a grumpy cop who has his heart in the right place. 

One day Raghu catches a glimpse of Anuradha (his former flame). He tries to get in touch with her. In the thinnest of cinematic conceits Raghu calls up a phone belonging to Eli and she pretends to be Anuradha. Now the scene is set for a hot extramarital affair. Except that Khalid has no intention of going down that road. Raghu’s telephonic conversations make him alive. Egged on by Nandini aka Eli’s suggestion he shares details of these conversations with his wife and their relationship slowly sparks again. Meanwhile, Abhi and Eli are on their way out.

This might be Biju Menon’s most nuanced performance. Though enacting the role of a hothead, the restraint he shows in the other scenes is remarkable. This might be as good a time as any for name-dropping! During my childhood I have played cricket quite a few times with Biju Menon. We used to make fun of his blink-and-you-miss scenes in TV serials, but now he has become irreplaceable in Malayalam movies. 

Asha Sharath has a brief and thankless role, but she executes it perfectly. Asif Ali has a meaty role, but is not able to shake off the feeling that it is just a prop for the Biju Menon show. Debutante Rajisha Vijayan is a real find. It is going to take a series of unfortunate events to prevent her from being much sought-after in the near future.

Writer Naveen Bhaskar and director Khalid intersperse the dramatic elements with dollops of clean comedy. The movie passes by at a fair clip while keeping the viewer really hooked. Without resorting to gimmicks they slowly subvert expectations. So slowly, in fact, that you realize how many unexpected turns the movie took only later. The producer roll-call includes Santhosh Sivan and Prithviraj, showing that despite being a debutante Khalid Rahman was able to impress veterans with his story.


Kismath (Director: Shanavas K Bavutty)

How far will you go for love? What obstacles will you overcome? And at the end do you know what fate has in store for you?

Based on a real story, Kismath follows 23-year-old Irfan (Shine Nigam) and 28-year-old Anitha (Sruthi Menon) as they try to get police protection from their relatives who are, naturally, opposed to their union.  Irfan, an Engineering student who spends his time customising superbikes, is from a well-to-do Muslim family, while Anitha is a research scholar who comes from a poor Hindu background. 

Most of the action happens over the course of a few hours in the police station in the town of Ponnani. There are a few flashbacks and flash-forwards, but the heart of the movie is in the cop-house. While awaiting their turn to meet the Sub-Inspector (a very solid Vinay Fortt, moving away from being the poor man’s Jayasuriya) the couple see the life happening in a police station, including a motor accident involving an Assamese (Mollywood recognised its minorities much before Hollywood!) a corruption case involving a senior cop and a chair that needed repairing! 

Kismath’s USP is its stark realism. While many such movies tend to move towards art-film category, debutant director Bhavakutty ensures this is not the case here by cutting across sequences rapidly. The most intensive action that happens may be two people shouting, but still he is able to keep the movie constantly in motion. The cinematography by Suresh Rajan is a revelation. 

The acting is uniformly excellent. Shine Nigam may not have typical leading man’s presence, but he is born to this role. He does not speak much here, but his face takes us through all the emotions a vulnerable young man who finds himself at the crossroads of his life. Sruthi Menon is an able foil. She subtly portrays a woman who is in a relationship with a much younger boy and, at times, need to take the lead.  There are very few familiar faces and this brings an intimacy to the film. 

The only grouse I have is a sort of post-script after the first end credit appears. It serves no other purpose, other than to, maybe, convince us that this was based on a true story and this is what happened afterwards. It detracts from a very satisfying conclusion and rubs off some of the sheen of an excellent movie. 


Ann Mariya Kalippilanu (Director: Midhun Manuel Thomas)

When was the last time you saw a children’s movie that appealed to adult sensibilities? One that left you smiling and not cringing? If you can’t recall, I suggest you go check out Ann Mariya. 

Ann Mariya (the extremely expressive Sara Arjun) is the offspring of two doctors Roy (Saiju Kurup) and Treesa (Leona Lishoy). Roy is working with the Red Cross in Syria, while Treesa brings up Ann alone. Ann is a budding athlete who wants to excel in long jump. 

One day Ann overhears a conversation between David, the Physical Education teacher, and her English teacher. Though too young to understand all that was said, the spunky girl went and told this to the principal. David found out who was responsible and disqualified Ann in long jump. Hell hath seen no fury like a schoolgirl scorned. And what do you do when you are angry with someone? Hire a goonda to beat them up. Enter lazy no-gooder Poombatta Gireesh (Sunny Wayne) and his sidekick Ambrose (Aju Varghese). They take Ann’s payment – an iPhone 6 – and scram. Little did they know who they were dealing with.

Ann and Gireesh begin an unlikely friendship which leads to him turning over a new leaf and the two of them exacting their revenge on David. All’s well that ends well. There is also a small case of an angel, but I am no spoiler!

Ann Mariya succeeds by making us care for the characters, but doesn’t descend into sentimentality. The humour is fresh and lively and the scenes do blend into the next. Sara Arjun is the heart of the movie and it is extremely hard to believe that she is not the nice Malayali girl that Ann is. She and Sunny make for one of the unlikeliest screen pairs in recent times. John Kaippallil does a PG version of Keerikkadan Jose as David, the bad guy. Some of his scenes with the schoolgirls actually points towards a much darker role than what you expect from a kids’ movie. The scene-stealer is, however, veteran Siddique who is brilliant as Perumkudy Baby, a local businessman who plays a big part in Gireesh’s transformation.

The movie works on the assumption we buy into a mother allowing her young daughter to have a friendship with an adult male just because the maid says that he has become a good guy. But if we can believe kuttichathans exist then this is not an issue at all!


Kammattipaadam (Director: Rajeev Ravi)

Real estate. The one commodity that will grow in value and become rarer as time goes by. In Malayalam, ‘earth ’ and ‘blood’ seem to gel well in sentences. And not without reason. There is usually blood involved in getting earth, and not just the ‘blood and tears’ variety. More ‘blood being spilt’. Kammattipaadam tells a small part of the blood that went into making Kochi the place it is now. 

Krishnan’s family moves into Kammattipaadam village in the late 70s. He grows up with his friend Ganga. They both look up to Balan, Ganga’s elder brother, who is a small-time hoodlum. As time passes by, they become entwined in the criminal way of life that is around them. Krishnan is also enamoured with Anitha, Ganga’s cousin. They become enforcers for the real estate mafia.

In the present day, Krishnan (Dulquer Salman), who is working as a security guy in Mumbai, receives a call from Ganga (Vinayakan). A call that convinces him to journey back to Kammattipaadam. Between flashbacks and present day we see the story unfold.

There is a lot of caste politics in the movie, which I leave to the better informed to talk about. I am more concerned about the story, and it is riveting. There are no excuses offered for anyone’s actions and no attempts to whitewash the criminal past or glorify it. We are all slaves to our environment and that is what will define us. 

Vinayakan has been around for many years in bit roles. But, as Ganga, he goes all for broke. It will be the role he will be remembered for and one he is unlikely to get a chance to repeat. As the unread, uncouth, unthinking Ganga he makes us care for someone who does not deserve it. Manikandan shines as Balanchettan, whose actions and choices are what drive the story forward. 

There are excellent supporting performances from Alencier Ley Lopez and Suraj Venjarammoodu, including a rare serious cameo by the omnipresent Soubin Shahir, which initially seems unnecessary, but actually plays a big part in establishing the myth of Balanchettan.

Dulquer is fine. He happily plays foil to the more showy performances and actually convinces us in his 40-year-old avatar. But whatever he does, his looks prove his undoing. We cannot shake the feeling that he is a movie star. One who cannot be part of that milieu. When everyone looks the part, he alone strikes a false note.

We know with whom Rajeev Ravi’s heart lies, but he makes it a point not to add rose petals when the thorns need to stay out. By using flashback and treating the story primarily as a whodunit, he immerses us into unfamiliar surroundings. Kammattipaadam shows us a people who we, the privileged middle class, rather not know about. But they are there. And their story needs to be told.    

PS: If you buy the DVD, please do not read the synopsis at the back. It spoils the whole story by revealing everything including what happens in the last scenes. 


Guppy (Director: Johnpaul George)

In cricket you often hear – mostly about the New Zealand team – about the whole being greater than the sum of their parts. (Google tells me Aristotle said it first.) It stands for a team effort that proves to be much more than what each individual could achieve alone. Guppy made me think of the opposite – the whole being less than its parts.

Guppy stands for the small fish that is mostly seen in aquarium. In this movie Guppy (Chethan Jayalal) is also the main protagonist. He is a young boy from an impoverished home taking care of his invalid mother and making a living breeding guppy, which is in demand because it eats mosquito larvae. Into their small village comes an engineer, Thejas Varkey (Tovino Thomas), who is going to build a railway overbridge. The two start off on the wrong foot and things go south from there. 

There is a lot to praise about Guppy. The performances, for starters. Chethan is understatedly brilliant as Guppy. He brings a raw intensity into his entire performance, be it the loving scenes with his mother, the angry ones with the engineer, the laidback times with his friends or even waiting open-mouthed for the veiled Aamina (Nandana Varma). Tovino Thomas, the most desirable man in Kerala, according to a recent poll, is quite efficient. He makes the audience see-saw between the decent guy he is and also the antagonist he has to be. There is a strong supporting cast including the peerless Srinivasan, Sudheer Karamana, Rohini and Alencier Ley Lopez. 

The humour is very evident, but never seems forced. We feel like the we are in the vicinity over-hearing the conversation between friends, rather than watching a stand-up saying funny lines. The actors and their lines bring the sense of realism that is now becoming compulsory in Malayalam cinema. 

But one cannot shake of a feeling of being underwhelmed. We don’t quite buy into why the main characters are at loggerheads. The sub-story of Sreenivasan’s railway gate operator does not quite have the impact it should. And, while we are nitpicking, I don’t understand how a government engineer could choose his projects and also how long he goes travelling!

Thinking back, I realise there is a lot to be admired, a lot to like. But those are the individual things. As a whole, we expect much more.