Directors Index: Altman, Robert

Robert Altman's masterpiece is a tone poem, an elegy for a time and place that is long-since gone, an ode to the heartbreak of the frontier at the turn-of-the-century. Warren Beatty stars as John Q. ("Pudgy") McCabe, a lonewolf businessman with a penchant for gambling and a "big rep" as something of a gunfighter. In the late 1800s, he arrives in the Pacific Northwest town of Presbyterian Church as it is still being developed, with mud-covered roads, buildings being erected from raw lumber, and a small saloon operated by a deep-eyed goof (Rene Auberjonois), the only place to have a drink or play cards under this dark, foreboding sky, brimming with rain and snow. It is here that McCabe sees the prosepcts for a brothel, and brings three whores to work for him. Soon, he has more than he knows what to do with after the arrival of Mrs. Constance Miller (Julie Christie), a proper Cockney lady who may be tougher even than he, who talks him into letting her coach him on how to run a real whoring outfit. On the horizon, there looms theoretical change in the form of a company (represented by Michael Murphy) that wants to buy him out, and will kill if necessary. The typical Western concerns itself with death and, particularly, with killing. There's death in Altman's film alright, but ever the genre-bending auteur, he has made a film about life. We witness the town growing up around us, we see the budding feelings between McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and we feel the genesis of warmth in a community. Altman, never a stickler for plot, allows the edges of his frame to expand and contract, the camera always roaming about aimlessly, zooming into the shadows and crevices in the background, absorbing the details of everyday life from a gallery of supporting characters (notice the one who is "thinking about shaving his beard" early in the film, and the payoff with he and John Schuck later on); Altman famously filled his Vancouver sets with all sorts of period-authentic details that would never be seen on-camera, just to get the feel right. The film has been co-adapted and directed by Robert Altman, who had barely started when he made this great early work, having previously directed the astronaut drama "Countdown" (1968) and the odd "That Cold Day in the Park" (1969). Then he had a breakthrough with his Korean War comedy "M*A*S*H*" (1970), and followed it with the quirky personal project, "Brewster McCloud" (1970). Here, Altman, working from the novel by Edmund Naughton, has crafted a deep, dour view of the end of an era, and the sorrowful relationship between two professionals: a businessman, and a high-class madam. "I got poetry in me," McCabe says to himself as if to rebuke Mrs. Miller's assumptions, and Altman's film has poetry too. This is a film about a fresh start that will never come, love that is never fully realized, and death which comes quick and sudden. Music is always a key component in Altman's work, and Leonard Cohen's sad, mournful songs are beautiful and hauntingly melodic as they fill the landscape; sometimes the same songs or snippets thereof will repeat themselves, painting a recurring mood from sequence to sequence, reflecting the themes of the narrative. This is the saddest Western you will ever see, maybe the least violent, and something more, something hauntingly intangible, something... NOTE: For more great films from Robert Altman, see "The Long Goodbye" (1973), "3 Women" (1977), "A Wedding" (1978), "Popeye" (1980), "Secret Honor" (1984), "Tanner '88" (1988), "Vincent and Theo" (1990), "The Player" (1992), "Short Cuts" (1993), "Gosford Park" (2001), "Nashville" (1975; his best film), and his appropriate final film, "A Prairie Home Companion" (2006).

Robert Altman's musically-driven romantic comedy is a fitfully amusing stylistic confusion, but by the end I just couldn't bring myself to care anymore. Paul Dooley is Alex Theodopoulos, a not-quite modern-style man in Los Angeles who comes from the culture of a Greek Orthodox family (including brother Dennis Franz and Henry Gibson as a brother-in-law who always points out the obvious) that conducts classical music in their living room, gathered around a booming stereo system. As the film opens, Alex is on a hilariously ill-fated date that was set up by a computer matchmaking service. His date is Sheila Shea (Marta Heflin, the bride from Altman's "A Wedding"), a sweet, lonely young woman who has a part in a perpetually-rehearsing would-be rock band. Her band, Keepin' 'Em Off the Streets, is something a third character - or is it wheel? The film has a lot going on: it intercuts the persistence Alex has for winning Sheila over with his family's traditional values and lack of approval that he have any sort of social life, as well as Sheila being married, as it were, to her bandmates (led by "Jesus Christ Superstar" himself Ted Neeley) and their long, late-night rehearsals. And always in the background is the real "perfect couple," an elderly man and his wife who love music and are always prepared, but who are gradually revealed to be - of course - less than perfect. Is this film about this young couple coming to like one another? Is it about clashing family values? Is it about the fortunes of a crappy rock band? It doesn't know. Robert Altman is the maverick behind such classics as "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" (1971) and "Nashville" (1975), and this was a personal project coming fast on the heels of his oddball sci-fi experiment "Quintet" (1979). Altman is prone to large all-encompassing canvases which expand and contract when necessary, consistently employing huge ensemble casts and probing the lives of everyone and everything his camera sees and hears. Normally, the results are riveting. Why then, if he was going to take on such a small-scale and seemingly simplistic story, did he feel the need to "amuse" himself with so much other stuff? For starters, the music ranges from awful to kind of catchy in an annoying sort of way. The "romantic comedy" as it were is quirky and intriguing enough. However, by the time it's over, we aren't that invested in the relationship of the characters and none of the other elements gel together quite right. The results are...less than perfect.

Robert Altman's frustrating and maddening attempt at science fiction is more of a curiosity than a necessity. Paul Newman stars as a nomad who travels to a colony of survivors during a futuristic ice age (filmed in Montreal), and there discovers a deadly game called "quintet" in which the only way to win is to kill the other players. Bizarre, off-putting and perplexing as all-get-out.

Robert Altman's film (which turned out to be his last) is a lively entertainment, a sweet ode to the simple pleasures to be had listening to the radio, and a lovely film about (appropriately) death. Altman employs a typically large ensemble cast for ostensibly the last broadcast of "A Prairie Home Companion," a St. Paul, Minnesota-based radio variety show, "the kind that died 50 years ago." Not particularly upset about the fact he's soon to be out of a job, the leader of this ragtag group is GK (Garrison Keillor), the narrator and head writer of the show. He is joined on stage by the Johnson Girls, Rhonda (Lily Tomlin from "Nashville") and Yolanda (Meryl Streep), and Yolanda brings along her talented misfit teenage daughter Lola (a stellar Lindsay Lohan). There's also the trail-hands Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly), whose specialty includes the uproarious musical tribut to ribald humor, "Bad Jokes." In typical Altman fashion, we also get a glimpse behind the scenes of the last show, with an anxiety-ridden stage manager named Molly ("Saturday Night Live" alum Maya Rudolph), who is several months pregnant (Rudolph's baby's actual father is stand-by director Paul Thomas Anderson, who was heavily influenced by Altman). Then, in the center of it all, is Guy Noir (Kevin Kline), a bumbling private-eye type who runs security for the program and has his eyes on all the variables that could make this night memorable in the worst possible ways. Seems the company was bought by a Texas conglomerate and they've sent their "axeman" (a humorless Tommy Lee Jones) to shut the whole thing down. Can the mysterious, white-trenchcoated "Dangerous Woman," (Virginia Madsen), an apparent angel, save them? Altman's film has a modest 105-minute running time and I wanted it to go on forever. The comedy is warm and teasing, the cast is delightful, and the soundtrack is filled with wall-to-wall music of the sort that Midwestern types love - songs which reflect a spirit, and arguably a sense of spirituality, which even the most hardened cynic can't resist. From Keillor's early solo "Slow Days of Summer" to Streep and Tomlin's showstopper "My Minnesota Home," from "Gold Watch and Chain," to the cast's big finale of "Red River Valley," this film is loaded with wonderful music. I dare you not to tear up and get a shiver down your spine as Chuck (L.Q. Jones), a sick old performer, takes to the stage to sing "You Have Been a Friend to Me," and towards the end appears to be gasping for air mid-lyric, eyes red, face pale, and just the slightest hint of tears forming. Robert Altman was 81 when he died in November 2006, having finally won an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement earlier that year and having completed this wonderfully fitting final work (he had two more films in pre-production at the time). He had a way of making his film sets like a party, and he loved actors, inviting them to bring what they could to make the party more festive. His camera (manned here by Ed Lachmann) was always moving, roving around to see whatever could be seen; it never appeared planned. He made judicious use of the zoom lense; he often liked to peek into the cracks and crevices behind the main action to see and show what most directors wouldn't bother with. The backgrounds of his films were never empty; he was as interested in the "side-stories" as he was in the "main plot." Yet his films never had a plot, per say; they were open to the many possibilities of everyday life. He gathered his massive casts for wonderful works, first garnering attention and acclaim with "MASH" (1970) and "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" (1971), and continued his style, developing a special sound system for recording his actors, which came in handy on such masterpieces as "Nashville" (1975), "The Player" (1992), "Short Cuts" (1993), and "Gosford Park" (2001) among many others. These were the work of a true artist, and he remains sorely missed.