On Robert Altman
Written byPosted on November 21, 2006
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Some filmmakers unfurl pyrotechnics at their audiences, flaunting their tricks like a crass magician. Others compensate for their inability to tap into the visceral by offering cerebral puzzles. Robert Altman simply wanted his audience to observe the human condition, however painful, baroque, or unappetizing it might be.
This is a rarer sensibility than one might expect from a filmmaker, which makes Altman’s death particularly shocking. And it’s no surprise that Altman was praised and marginalized, often both at the same time, as he somehow kept on making films, many of them financed by the big studios, that were irreverent, inexorable, and often misunderstood.
It is telling that Altman’s technical innovations emerged not from the need to show off (although The Player’s opening shot, a fabulous riff on stylistic excess, might be exempted), but from a compulsion to chronicle humanity, whether contained singularly in Philip Baker Hall’s harrowing portrait of Nixon in Secret Honor or the considerable population of characters his films were known for. I could talk endlessly about his leisurely pans and zooms, executed as if a stoner had cross-pollinated with a nouvelle vague vanguard. For McCabe and Mrs. Miller, he erected a whole town and asked each extra to fully inhabit his part. There are his multitrack audio innovations seen in Nashville. Altman didn’t tell the actors when the camera and the mike would be on them and simply had them improvise their scenes, thus removing any lingering dregs of exhibitionism and ensuring that his cast would give naturalistic performances.
But was Altman a true naturalist? Altman’s highly entertaining The Long Goodbye is, aside from Robert Montgomery’s The Lady in the Lake, the most idiosyncratic of Raymond Chandler film adaptations, transforming Marlowe into an inveterate wisecracker contending with 1970s Southern California. And in heightening Marlowe’s sarcasm and juxtaposing this against SoCal excesses, Altman, aided by Elliott Gould’s perfect casting and Leigh Brackett’s exceptionally witty script, managed to compartmentalize genre elements, dissecting Chandler’s narrative elements (the repartee, the ladies, and Marlowe himself) while entertaining us. Consider how the opening of Brewster McCloud, where we hear “I forgot the opening line” instead of the MGM lion roar. Altman was not only concerned with how films could reflect the human condition, but how the film medium could be manipulated, perhaps dismantled completely, to favor the human condition
Altman’s sense of play was so heightened that I’m tempted to call him the cinematic Nabokov. MASH was a film with cojones, one of the first films depicting malaise and arrogance in a horrific war environment with careful insouciance. Thieves Like Us took the great noir classic They Live by Night and turned its characters into slow-witted robbers with the radio constantly blaring in the background. Short Cuts featured Julianne Moore delivering a monologue about her troubled marriage naked from the waist down and also included the fascinating context of Jennifer Jason Leigh talking dirty into the phone while changing the diapers.
Where other octogenarian filmmakers rested on their laurels, Altman went to the grave directing. He simply could not stop. Even his most recent films reflected his almost constant curiosity: the dance world (The Company), a return to politics (Tanner on Tanner, the Garry Trudeau-Altman collaborative followup to Tanner ‘88), the chasm between classes (Gosford Park, which included several wry homages to Renoir’s The Rules of the Game), and the humanity found within small town life (Cookie’s Fortune).
Only Altman could have conjured up the classic moment in Nashville where Keith Carridine sings “I’m Easy” to a crowd, where not one, but two women in the audience believe that the song is about them. In the next Carridine moment that follows, we see Carridine in bed with one of the women, who has made this decision at a tremendous personal cost. But we know that Carridine will go on philandering, not giving a damn about her.
Altman was unafraid to take risks. Even in his latter years, he was turning out idiosyncratic films like Dr. T and the Women, defying the MPAA with a closeup shot of a baby bursting out of a vagina and ruminating upon the gender gap at the risk of coming across as a misogynist.
Now that Altman is gone, I’m hard pressed to name another living filmmaker as playful or as fiercely devoted to depicting humanity in its simple yet multifaceted form. Mike Leigh comes to mind, but his subject matter is more committed to the caustic. Wong Kar-Wai is also close, but Wong’s visuals are as potent as his subjects. Jean-Luc Godard is still alive, but his pugnacity has overtaken his innovations.
I must turn back to Altman as sui generis: his perverse amicability, his love of jazz, and his incessant though unobtrusive experimentation. He was one of the best cinematic realists we had. And I don’t see any emerging filmmaker coming close to Altman’s accomplishments.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
The same day Pynchon’s new book comes out, too. I think Altman is one of the few, perhaps the only director, who could have done justice to Pynchon’s work. Similar sensibilities, similar styles:complex plots with lots of characters and a sense of things not ending completely or resolutely. Another missed cultural opportunity…
There won’t be another Altman… just as there wasn’t another Wilder and will never be another Scorsese, Spielberg, et al. He was truly one of a kind.
Having said that, I maintain that P.T. Anderson remains Altman’s heir apparent — though not, thankfully, as a slavish imitator. (Then again, I liked the Aimee Mann singalong in Magnolia.) The differences between them are certainly notable, but it appears Altman himself saw enough similarities, hence Anderson assisting him in directing A Prairie Home Companion.
Still, there will never be another Altman, which is both sobering and refreshing. His piece of film history is unique and it will always be all his own.
Just coincidentally, Mrs. Jones and I rented California Split last night. About 10 minutes in, we both looked at each other with the same “holy shit, is this good” expression on our faces. The audio alone blew me away – all the overlapping dialogue, half-heard stuff, all the messiness of life on the screen (and in your ear). Plus Eliott Gould is a riot.
I still can’t believe he’s gone…that seemed to just come out of nowhere. And just as “A Prairie Home Companion” was nearing #1 in my Netflix queue.
He really did have a unique style and an insight into how people relate to each other. We’re not going to see films like his again.
I loved Gosford Park, and Cookie’s Fortune was so fun. Short Cuts was anything but short, but it was always interesting. Come to think of it, the guy was responsible for Julia Roberts meeting Lyle Lovett.
Anyway, he will be missed. Nice tribute.