Robert Altman Remembered

Now that I'm back home, with my regular computer and all my notes, I have to write something more sustantial about Robert Altman. I'm not sure what I should say. His death does not have the emotional punch that the death of Johnny Cash or Charles Schulz had (2 artists who were, like Altman, icons, who I bloody well worshipped - all my life, really, especially Schulz), but culturally, it is similar. He was not my favorite director, or the one who most defined what I thought films should be (those would be Capra and Ozu, with Godard near at hand) - but he was possibly the most important filmmaker in my life. I said a great deal in my "Altman and Me" post during last year's blogathon - it is hard to overstate how important Robert Altman's films were in forming my interest in film. It's hard to talk or think about Altman without talking and thinking about myself - he was an absolutely crucial part of my intellectual autobiography. Like reading Nietzsche, or The Confidence Man, or listening to the Velvet Underground, or Louis Armstrong - his films were a catalyst, they changed how I thought about films.

His impact on me was certainly more intellectual than emotional. That is partly a function of Altman's films, I think - they can be profoundly moving, but they are also, usually, distancing - you don’t quite emotionally enter them, the way you can with Capra or Ozu, for instance. This makes him like Godard - he makes sure you keep a distance. I think he did that quite deliberately - the way his style keeps you outside the story, keeps you from sharing the experience of the main characters. All those overlapping voices and sounds, the way the films look, the long lenses and incessant zooms - you start outside the space and don't exactly enter it as you are brought closer to it. The spaces in his films - the mirrors and windows and doors and stairways, always keeping you away from the story, the characters, etc. It is always a cold place. You watch emotions, you don’t identify with them.

It always drove me crazy when people talked about him as if all he did was let a bunch of good actors act, and let the shooting take care of itself. That is so wrong! His style, especially in those great 70s films, is as recognizable and controlled as anything in Scorsese and Kubrick - the telephoto lenses, the zooms, the mirrors and doors and windows, the overlapping dialogue and sound design, the cluttered sets, the staging, deemphasizing individuals (except when it counted). Not to mention symbolism (take the circles and spires of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, or the role of water and fire, wind, earth, or the blue and red light, their various associations with men and women - which recur: what about the pools, fishtanks, desert in Three Women?); or structural tricks, symmetries (scenes, or whole films, like Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean, with its sets of 5s and 10s, its mirrored mirrors, etc.), self-quotations.... Sometimes the style verges on self-parody: you notice it in his bad films, Quintet or Pret A Porter or what have you - when the story fails, the style can be overwhelming.

Though even at his worst, what gets put on the screen is gorgeous: even Quintet, as bad a film as anyone is likely to find, is stunning looking.

And so... Let us say goodbye. And note the possibility - not out of the question - that Prairie Home Companion might win an Oscar. I suppose it would be a nasty irony - but it would still be a nice touch. And frankly, there are not likely to be any other films in contention that deserve it more. It may not be his best, or even in the top 15 or so, but it's a pretty damned good film, and god knows Oscars aren't about picking the best films. So why not? He's the best American filmmaker this side of Frank Capra and Howard Hawks, so he ought to have an award or two, even if only posthumously.