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.
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