KING OF THE HILL/THE UNDERNEATH - #698

And so it is I return to this long-neglected blog as my personal project #1 following a major life change that saw me step away from the bulk of my writing six months ago and move from Portland, OR, to North Hollywood, CA, to join Vertigo Comics as a Senior Editor. And so it is that my return is as much about me as it is about the films. But so it also is that Steven Soderbergh’s transitional double feature makes for an apropos subject with which to reignite my journey here. Not that the TV has be turned off or that I haven’t been watching my Criterions, but you’ll have to wait for second viewings before you get to know the full extent of what I thought of Ride the Pink Horse (great) or The BlackStallion (good) or It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (not so good)--though I could get personal about a couple of those two.

But no, this is a reunion with Steven Soderbergh, a model of creative daring, a chameleon of cinema, who here we find looking for his way while doing two films that, visually, seem the least him. Be it the idyllic nostalgia of 1993’s King of the Hill or the cool-like-a-glacier artifice of his 1995 soft-boiled The Underneath, his adaptation of a Depression-era memoir or a remake of the superb Robert Siodmak noir Criss Cross, these are films that found Soderbergh searching. A state of malaise and confusion not unlike what I was feeling myself leading up to my own life change. Who am I and what am I doing here making these things? Hell, just contrast the mood of the titles: from top to bottom, the highest to lowest, monarch to corpse.

Not that either movie here is wholly terrible, no matter the director’s own assessment of The Underneath. Even there I should note how much I hated it on first viewing back during its original release. It suffered from a contrived indie ennui that was oh-so-popular at the time, the same distancing self-regard that has kept me from being a fan of Hartley or Egoyan. The Underneath ages better than expected though. On my third viewing, I am fine with it, though only just.

On the other hand, this is my first time with King of the Hill, a wholly enjoyable but strangely anonymous take on A.E. Hotchner’s account of one childhood furnished in aspirational poverty. A very young Jesse Bradford (Bring it On, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet [review]) stars as Aaron, an imaginative child whose proclivity for lying is home grown. He and his parents and his little brother live in a hotel on the wrong side of the line for the school Aaron attends, but his parents encourage his bending of the truth to keep getting a better education because one day the fib will bend all the way around to being real--or so his father believes. You can’t blame him for wanting to go the whole way with the cover-up.

Naturally, this will take much longer than expected, and things will get worse before they get better--particularly after the younger brother (Cameron Boyd) is shipped off to relatives, mom (Lisa Eichorn) is shipped off to a sanitarium, and dad (Jeroen Krabbé) ships himself off to parts unknown to sell watches, leaving Aaron to fend for himself and watch his carefully constructed ruse of a life fall apart. 

There are some stellar sequences in King of the Hill. Anytime Bradford and Boyd share the screen, there’s a beautiful rapport between the two that would have you believe they really did grow up together. Bradford manages to find similar connections with other actors, including some key scenes with Adrien Brody, who plays an older hotel resident who teaches Aaron a few tricks. This ability to be present with his co-stars is Bradford’s greatest strength, even when at times he is the weakest link. His confidence and good looks never fail him, so even as he’s supposed to be sickly and starving, he generally just appears to be having a bad day.

It’s one of many things that break the reality of the picture. Soderbergh transports too many caricatures from old movies into what is otherwise a modern interpretation of the timeframe. The angry cop (John McConnell) and bullying bellboy (Joseph Chrest) are cartoons rather than people. One expects them each to take a brick to the back of the head, Krazy Kat-style. Compare this with the sensitive portrayal by Amber Benson (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) as a young girl isolated by her epilepsy, and you see how much better King of the Hill would have been had Soderbergh chased the humanity instead of the visual homily. (Or perhaps embraced the antiquity completely, much as he did in The Good German [review 1, 2]).

Which, if stepping too far into caricature is the main problem of King of the Hill, it seems to also be the only aspect of the film Soderbergh carries over into the next. The Underneath is all surface chill, the pretense and plot twists of classic noir, but with none of the fire or the passion. In a way, were we to make this a legit double-bill where The Underneath is the first film’s sequel, we could see this as silver-tongued Aaron having returned to his hometown after his lies got him run out on a rail, now all grown up, looking to make amends, and failing to find new paths.

Peter Gallagher stars as Michael Chambers, a compulsive gambler whom we will learn skipped out on his debts, leaving his girlfriend Rachel (Alison Elliott) to clean up after him. He’s come back to see his widowed mother marry a new fella (Paul Dooley), only to find Rachel has now hooked up with local gangster Tommy Dundee (William Fichtner). Michael’s stepdad gets him a job driving an armored car, but Michael is ready to toss that new opportunity and everyone’s happy lives aside by luring Tommy into a robbery that, he hopes, will lead to a double-cross and a journey into the sunset with Alison.

Despite having solid source material to build from, Soderbergh hits a wiffle ball here. He mines the plot for its basic story, but then mars the whole thing with a baffling multi-timeframe structure that does little to enhance what is occurring. Rather, it seems like smoke-and-mirrors to mask how little is going on underneath (if you’ll pardon the expression). Likewise the overbearing lighting schemes. The blues and the greens and the reds are meant to signify the different plot threads and shifting emotions, but as symbolism, Soderbergh comes up empty. Taken at face value, The Underneath is a kaleidoscopic disco of nausea.

So, too, do the backstories the writer/director invents for the characters ring hollow. Michael has a brother, David (Adam Trese), who is a cop. David has stuck around and been there for his mother (Anjanette Comer), and he resents how Michael manages to consistently screw up and yet be forgiven. It’s not hard to side with David, because Michael sure does seem like an empty shirt. It’s impossible to see how his lack of charisma entices the women in his life to make so many wrong choices. (Elisabeth Shue also appears as a bank teller who should know better.)

Once again, Soderbergh pits his too-pretty lead against a salacious villain. Though Fichtner can be quite good playing the heavy (First Snow [review 1, 2], The Lone Ranger), here he is like a fetal bad guy waiting to come to full term. (When he grows up, he’ll be Gary Oldman in The Professional.) Tommy’s outbursts may rattle the audience out of the stupor the film otherwise encourages, but in a way that is more boorish than intriguing.

Even so, for the plethora of negatives, The Underneath ends up being an all right movie. It slithers rather than plods, and its final act finds some energy and  manages to be interesting right down to the final twist.

Soderbergh wouldn’t disagree with any of the above. In fact, his interviews on this set back up most of it. He says during the filming of The Underneath he escaped from the disaster at hand by fantasizing about making Schizopolis [review], the film that would change everything for him. In effect, these--his third and fourth films--were building blocks as much as they were stumbling blocks to become the filmmaker he was meant to be. These would give way to Schizopolis, and that would lead to Out of Sight, and not long after that Traffic [review], and a string of unbroken successes (yes, unbroken) right up to his shift from movies to TV and TheKnick.

And so hopefully it will be for me. The prior couple of years of floundering--mostly on projects you will never see, mind you, not on anything that got published--have set me up for an unexpected turn into tomorrow. Let’s hope my track record from here on out will be just as good as Soderbergh’s.

LA CIENAGA (Blu-ray) - #743

Everything and nothing happens in La Ciénaga, the debut feature from Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel (The Headless Woman). Spanning the space of one aimless summer, this avant-garde drama captures the boredom and the heat for one extended family forced together by circumstance as life changes and petty concerns swirl all about.

The narrative kicks off with an accident. At a pool party, middle-aged mother Mecha (Graciela Borges) falls face first, smashing her drinking glass against her chest. Was she drunk? Did she trip? Stories vary. But the lacerations above her breasts seem serious enough that her sister Tali (Mercedes Morán) loads her kids in the car and heads over. Mecha has two teenaged daughter of her own, as well as an adult son, José (Juan Cruz Bordeau), who also makes the trip, leaving his older lover (Silvia Baylé) in Buenos Aires. There is something oedipal suggested by this couple, and in general José is portrayed as a sexual being, with hints of incestuous longing from his siblings and his cousins.

Which is all part of the strange hormonal miasma that hangs around everything. The children--and there are many what with friends that hang around--seem driven by animal impulses. Boys point their rifles at girls in the woods, girls play tricks on unsuspecting boys in the town. One of Mecha’s daughters, Momi (Sofia Bertolotto), is nicknamed “Dirty” because she’ll go days without showering or brushing her hair. There is a casual racism toward the indigenous people, including Isabel (Andrea López), the household maid. Every moment in La Ciénaga feels like it’s the moment before something awful is going to happen.

And yet, outside of the occasionally injury or quick flash of violence, it never really does. The worst thing remains uncommented on, unseen, unresolved. Like the apparition of the Virgin Mary that is a running thread throughout La Ciénaga, any big happening stays invisible, only hinted at. Meaning, like spirituality, is ephemeral. This is Martel’s strange balance, that restlessness of an idle summer,  particularly for a tween like Momi or the boy Joaquin (Diego Baenas), who has already lost an eye as a consequence of being allowed to run wild. Everyone is always getting dirty, they are consistently uncomfortable in the heat, and the backyard pool where Mecha hurt herself is so filthy as to be unswimmable. The title La Ciénaga translates as “The Swamp,” and while it most certainly refers to this swimming pool, it’s also a descriptive of the entire state of being Martel’s depicting: this family is stuck in a swamp of history and the expectations that grow there like algae.

Martel shoots all these goings on with a similarly lazed but observant eye. She takes her time with some takes, working around the tangled bodies, squeezing into tight quarters. Natural lighting pervades most of the scenes, as does natural sound. There are lots of marvelous audio touches throughout, like the dual ringing telephones, or the regular barking of unseen dogs. There is a kind of naturalness to the whole affair that befits La Ciénaga’s episodic narrative. As the heat eventually makes some folks cranky, and certain conflicts come to a head, Martel continues to tease our expectations, only to gracefully exit more quietly than she entered.

For technical specs and special features, see the full article at DVDTalk.com.

MY WINNIPEG (Blu-ray) - #741

Guy Maddin has always been a filmmaker torn between his nostalgia for old cinema and his forward-thinking filmmaking techniques. His appropriation of antiquated styles in movies like Brand Upon the Brain! [review] and The Saddest Music in the World were clever allusions, throwbacks clearly made using current technology with a progressive and irreverent approach to narrative. Something has always driven the Canadian director to reach back and pull the past into the here and now.

In My Winnipeg, his 2007 film, a self-described "docu-fantasia," the past Maddin digs into is his own. As the name might suggest, My Winnipeg is a tribute to the city, his city, his hometown--the Canadian burg that is said to be the geographical center of North America. It is also a tribute to his mother, whom he brings alive via re-enactments of events from his childhood. He considers her influence, and re-examines difficult moments, and, as his narration tells us, even drags her into the experiment, eager to see what she will learn through this trip down memory lane.

Except, of course, he doesn't really, because that's not his actual mom on the screen, but instead an actress named Ann Savage--a fact he cheekily withholds even as he informs us that all the versions we see of him and his brothers and sister as kids are just stand-ins. It's all part of the dreamscape he creates from the get-go, establishing a surreal version of history that he inserts himself into, teasing the audience with the strange lore of the place where he grew up. Horses frozen in an ice storm, Russian hockey players, labor strikes, trees growing in the middle of the street--these are all meant to be a part of the myth and legends of Winnipeg. But how much of it is true? Does it matter?

Of course not. We are told right there in the title. This is Guy Maddin's Winnipeg, his fanciful recreation of the places that informed who he is. There is never any question that he is an unreliable narrator--the movie is framed by his flight from the city, his attempt to get away, but we know he has no intention of leaving, he loves it all--and it's the lies he chooses to tell that inform our true opinion of the man and his origins. These fictions he creates, these myths he makes, they are a tribute to all the things he says they are, but they are also a tribute to his real love: storytelling. The kind of storytelling that goes on in a small community, the kind of fibs a child imagines to make the world around him seem more interesting, and the kind of daydreams that really do break the Guy Maddins of the world out of their humble beginnings and turns them into internationally renowned motion picture directors.

It's fun and intriguing and just generally delightful to watch. My Winnipeg is an autobiography unburdened by reality or truth, and thus far more emotionally honest and revealing than most tracts that try to tell it like it "really is."

For technical specs and special features, see the full article at DVDTalk.com.

THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT (Blu-ray) - #740

Casting back in my memory, I think I first heard of Rainer Werner Fassbinder at the same time I first heard of Douglas Sirk, back in the late 1990s or so when Martin Scorsese and others were trying to introduce Sirk back into the conversation. So, even though it would take me longer to actually experience the cinema of Fassbinder (I was drawn in by the stories I heard of Berlin Alexanderplatz [review]) than it would Sirk, whom I sought out immediately, the two would remain inextricably linked. Largely because Fassbinder wanted it to be so.

The German director’s 1972 film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is his tribute to Sirk, an attempt to adopt some of the same themes as the master of melodrama, to tell a story of women and their concerns, and to do so with the same colorful backdrops. While I’d suggest that the final result might be more aptly described as “Norma Desmond by way of Ingmar Bergman,” one can still see the sudsy fingerprints of Sirk all over it. Yet, it’s also more than homage: The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is very much its own thing.

Fassbinder’s film is an adaptation of his own play, and the theatricality of the staging and structure of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant would betray that even if the credits did not. (And, again, like the Sirk influence, this is a good thing). The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant is essentially a story in four acts, plus an epilogue, set in the same space, Petra’s apartment. Petra (Margit Carstensen, later seen in Fassbinder’s World on a Wire) is a middle-aged fashion designer who has sealed herself off in a claustrophobic world of her own creation. She still works, but mostly from bed, and as we watch, honestly, we only see her longsuffering, silent servant, Marlene (Fassbinder-regular Irm Hermann), actually put brush to paper and design anything.

Within her decadently decorated four walls, Petra receives many guests, including her cousin Sidonie and eventually Sidonie’s friend, Karin. (They are played, respectively, by Katrin Schaake and Hanna Schygulla, also regulars in Fassbinder films; in the way he builds a stock company of female actors, one might also draw comparisons with Pedro Almodovar.) It’s Karin who throws a spanner in the works. Petra is drawn to her, so in Act Two, she lures the younger woman back to her apartment, and in a case of “who’s playing who?” convinces her to stay with her after hearing Karin’s sob story about how tough her current living situation is.

Petra’s interest in Karin is more than charitable, and by Act Three, the fact that they are lovers is quite obvious, even if it’s not explicitly said so out loud. Yet, it’s also already over, the parasitic union having run its course for Karin, who has gotten what she wants. Leading to the final act, wherein Petra is despondent and suicidal on her birthday. Enter her college-aged daughter (Eva Mattes), whom she verbally abuses, and her aristocratic mother (Gisela Fackeldey), who clearly still rules the roost despite Petra’s many successes, and we see the pattern of three generations of broken women and their dysfunctional understandings of love. Petra lays everything bare, possibly making it clear for the first time for some of the more sheltered viewers in the early-’70s audience, and the melodrama reaches a crescendo.

Fassbinder divides all of these scenarios clearly, inserting a fade to black between and also marking the various sections with different songs, including hits by the Platters and the Walker Bros. Between those fades, he prefers long takes with invisible edits. There are cuts, there are angle changes, but they are never obvious. Once the drama has sucked you in, you’d be hard-pressed to notice or recall editor Thea Eymesz’s nips and tucks. Likewise, cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, who later went on to work with Scorsese and Coppola (not to mention Prince), uses the camera merely as a framing device. He doesn’t push, he doesn’t highlight--rather, his work is in capturing the drama, as well as color and the costuming. Petra as written and as Margit Carstensen plays her, is forceful enough a presence on her own to command the montage without any added help. Well, except for maybe costume designer Maja Lemcke. The woman’s moods are telegraphed by her outfits and wigs. When she is seducing Karin, she is like an exotic queen out of some mythological history, all baubles and distractions; when she is being jilted, she is more covered, and her hair is a hard-lined bob; on either end of the movie, when she is in despair, she wears a plain nightgown and no wig at all. The space between is so long, we forget her most honest face before we are reminded of it again at the end. Without the warpaint and the wardrobe, she is vulnerable. At her most naked, she is the most alone.

For technical specs and special features, see the full article at DVDTalk.com.

KINOSHITA AND WORLD WAR II: PORT OF FLOWERS/THE LIVING MAGOROKU - ECLIPSE SERIES 41

The interesting thing about boxed sets sometimes is, if you’re not familiar with a particular filmmaker, they offer a crash course in his or her themes and style. You can build a foundation, either creating a starting point for further exploration (example: other Eclipse bundles like Early Bergman [review] or The First Films of Samuel Fuller [review]) or provide a broad overview, leaving you to fill in the gaps later (The Essential Jacques Demy [review 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]).

With Japanese director Keisuke Kinoshita, my only prior experience had been with Twenty-Four Eyes [review], his 1954 film about a small-town schoolteacher. It was an assured drama lacking in histrionics, focusing instead on the common and, arguably, the banal--though, the “everyday” might be a more accurate term, as the small things are given equal weight to the stuff of bigger film narratives. One can immediately see the roots for that kind of storytelling in Kinoshita’s initial films, collected here under the banner Kinoshita and World War II. Indeed, the five films in this, the forty-first Eclipse collection, were made during and just after the war, and reflect Japanese life as it was being lived at the time.

The lead feature is 1943’s Port of Flowers, a seemingly light-hearted movie about two inept con men descending on an island town in hope of bilking the residents out of their hard-earned money. Shuzo (Eitaro Ozawa, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs [review]) and Tomekichi (Ken Uehara, Mr. Thank You [review]) mistakenly try to pull the same ruse. Having discovered that, at one time, an industrialist tried to build a shipyard in this village, only to have the Great Depression wash his dreams away, both men arrive within hours of each other claiming to be the son no one knew the industrialist had. Rather than blow the scheme, the two crooks pretend to be brothers, finding that the love the village had for their alleged father is so great, they are more than willing to believe anything.

They are also more than willing to drop every yen they have to help make the shipyard a reality, and before the con artists realize, they have more cash than they know what to do with. These small-time operators are not prepared for a big score, and fear that they’ll only mess it up. Add to that the charms of village life, and particularly the island women, and they start to have second thoughts about disappearing with the bounty.

Up until this point, Port of Flowers is fairly innocuous, offering only a slight social critique, particularly in relation to a young woman who had left the island in search of a more cosmopolitan existence, only to be sent back under questionable circumstances. There is also a division made between her brother (Chishu Ryu, Equinox Flower, Late Autumn, etc. [reviews]) and the other villagers, as he was able to go to Tokyo and attend college (an accomplishment the con men can’t even claim). Education is poised against traditional values. In its early stages, I assumed Port of Flowers was heading toward State and Main territory: the self-important city folk would find themselves taken advantage of by the country bumpkins.

That all changes on December 7, 1941. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the expansion of the war, a nationalistic surge takes over the town, and the con men find themselves swept up in it. If they can build a ship for real, the country could use it, and they can serve in their own small way.

It’s fascinating to see a story about Japanese patriots during the conflict, particularly as the war was still going while Kinoshita was making his film. Had Port of Flowers been made even a couple of years later, the drama would have a different tenor. As they say, the victors get to write history, and so most Japanese stories that followed show the regret and misgivings that were deemed appropriate in peacetime. Think of how some American pundits reacted to Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises [review] last year because its main character never questioned how the planes he was building would be used, and then imagine Port of Flowers being released today. Doesn’t it make sense that the Japanese citizenry would want their country to thrive and prosper and ultimately win? It’s no different than what Clint Eastwood was trying to do by leaving the politics out of American Sniper [review], and look how that turned out.

The thing is, there are no politics presented here, no anti-American or European rhetoric, just average folks seeing the direction their nation was heading and trying to do their part. Kinoshita avoids making the movie propaganda in this way, as opposed to say the straight-up rallying in something like Powell and Pressburger’s 49th Parallel [review]. While Kinoshita did have to get the approval of the government censorship board before making Port of Flowers, it doesn’t feel like he was being swayed to deliver a particular message.

Though, if he had to cut some things here or there, that might explain the abruptness of the ending. Without giving too much away, the con men disappear from the island before the ship they caused to be built is launched--and, indeed, on the same day some of the local fishermen are attacked by Allied submarines--without much explanation. We can fill in some of the pieces, but not to any exact detail. It’s almost like a reel, or at least a scene or two, is missing.

But then, if there is anything to quibble over in Port of Flowers, it’s some of  Kinoshita’s clumsy edits. Most noticeable are the times he tries to build tension by quick cuts that are so quick, they are practically subliminal. These mostly involve the local policeman, whom Kinoshita wishes to make an object of fear for his bumbling bad guys. Most of the rest of the movie has a much more patient mis-en-scene, more akin to Ozu, and thus it makes these sudden flashes of Hitchcockian style all the more jarring.

That said, the first-time director shows some flashes of ambition that work quite well. The natural setting, including the realistic sets, and the way Kinoshita handles the countryside, including bad weather, shows a confidence learned from his previous years as an apprentice. There is also one very effective sequence where the old woman Okano (Chieko Higashiyama, Tokyo Story [review]) relates memories of time spent with the real shipbuilder. She tells the story while on a carriage, and the scenery outside changes from the island view to a rear projection of a life she imagines for herself and her lost love in far away locales. It’s a pretty obvious technique to modern eyes, but it creates a dreaminess that perfectly evokes the feeling of having spent decades pining for what might have been. The effect is helped by Higashiyama’s careful performance. It’s a rare moment of vulnerability for a character who otherwise keeps her guard up. She is quite good, as are Ozawa and Uehara. The duo are subtly comic, avoiding going too broad, and thus making the poor intentioned thieves sympathetic rather than pitiable.

Nationalism is far less of a subtle topic in Kinoshita’s follow-up. Made the same year as Port of Flowers, The Living Magoroku is a propagandist fable, the kind of thing that might have run as a short subject between the cartoon and the main feature in wartime Hollywood, but here extended to full length.

The gist is this: in a rural community, the Onagi family maintains the same farmland that their ancestors fought on nearly 400 years prior. The Living Magoroku even opens with a flashback to samurai clashing on the meadow before cutting to modern-day warriors training for combat in the wilderness nearby. Superstition has left the family’s field untouched all this time. They believe that to break the ground would be to violate the spirits of the ancestors who fell there. The clan is currently overseen by its widowed matriarch (Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Apart From You [review]), who also believes she lost her husband at a young age, as the family has lost all of their men, for even thinking of violating the curse. Her own son, Yoshihiro (Yasumi Hara), believes he is suffering from lung disease. Outside influence is pushing him to cultivate the land, but he is scared.

Enter an army doctor (Toshio Hosokawa) and an ambitious sergeant (Uehara). Both are visiting the Onagi homestead for a similar reason. The doctor is looking to buy a vintage sword from the family, as he foolishly sold his own and needs to restore the lost heirloom and his good name; the sergeant believes he also has such a sword and wants it appraised. Between the two of them, they will sway mother and son to do the right thing.

The Living Magoroku was written by Kinoshita, as well as directed, and he attempts to stack the narrative, creating an ensemble of characters with similar goals and faults to match the Japanese climate of the period. The Living Magoroku consistently works on two levels, each chafing against the other, its own narrative locked in conflict. Kinoshita seeks a balance between tradition and necessity, superstition and reason, honor and pragmatism. Much like the educated man was seen as the voice of civilization in Port of Flowers, so too does logic and experience hold sway here. Land, armor, and weaponry are all things to be revered, but the battlefield is not as important as the fields where the citizenry lives and eats. Nor is sacrifice made only on the front lines.

This is the ultimate thrust of The Living Magoroku: each person must do his or her part, even if they don’t like it. Again, consider American drives for tin and rubber, or warnings how “loose lips sink ships,” the person next to you in this theater may be a spy. It’s not at all subtle, neither in its message nor even in its drama. (And, at its worst, the acting can either be stiff or corny in equal measures; at its best, unmannered and naturalistic.) Still, Kinoshita strives to find the humanity in it all. The personal cost can be repaid, and the group effort leads to extensive bonds. The sergeant strives to unite two young lovers who are unable to marry due to the argument over the land, and the doctor not only restores his family name, but he extends that family when it’s all said and done.

Though the writing seems heavy at times, the overall structure of The Living Magoroku is slick, with Kinoshita confining the action to a few small places, and also isolating the timeframe to two separate visits from both the army men. He also shows an increased movement through the scenes, including elegant pans from one happening to another, like moving from the ground up to spy through a window, creating an overall feeling of connectedness and realism. This is one world he’s operating in, one community. Likewise the visual connections between past and present, the objects and artifacts echoing back to those brief battlefield moments reminding us just how present history is in the day-to-day.

This disc was provided by the Criterion Collection for purposes of review. The stills shown are taken from the standard-definition DVD release and not the Blu-ray under discussion.

3 WOMEN (Blu-ray) - #230

“I’m trying to reach toward a picture that’s totally emotional--not narrative or intellectual--where an audience walks out and they can’t say anything about it except what they feel.”

Robert Altman’s description of his intentions with 3 Women doesn’t really decode the entire thing, but it does give a key to opening up whatever secret book holds the answers. Because 3 Women, which Altman wrote and produced under his own Lion’s Gate banner as well as directed, is not a story that works on paper, it’s not a script with a traditional plot. Its act breaks are more like psychotic breaks, in that the movie transforms twice, shifting when its main characters face trauma, swapping their roles, and yet never stopping to explain. Altman is clear in his nod here to Luis Bunuel, naming a pushy boss Mrs. Bunweill as tribute, and interestingly enough, holds much in common with the movie the Spanish filmmaker released that same year. 1977 brought us both 3 Women and That Obscure Object of Desire. In Bunuel’s film, the lead actress changes mid-way through the picture, a confounding narrative conceit that demands the audience take a leap of faith that it all means something. Altman plays a few parlor tricks of his own. Both these men were driving down Mulholland Dr. a couple of decades before David Lynch.

The story here begins normally enough. A young woman named Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek) is starting work at a nursing home, and she is assigned Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall) to train her. The two couldn’t be more different. Millie is tall and composed; Pinky is small and shy. Millie talks constantly, yet no one ever seems to listen; Pinky is always watching, yet others often don’t see her. Millie pretends to be the sophisticate; Pinky is a child. Millie likes dressing in yellow; Pinky is nicknamed Pinky for a reason.

Pinky is also somewhat of a mimic. An emotional and physical chameleon. She is drawn to Millie and soon begins copying her. She borrows a phrase here, a detail there. When Millie needs a new roommate, Pinky seizes on the opportunity. What better way to observe her new obsession than in her natural habitat? It’s like Single White Female for the art house, but without the murderous intent.

Things are up-and-down for the new roomies. Millie notices things being slightly off about the younger woman. Likewise, the landlord’s wife and proprietress of the saloon where Millie drinks, the similarly named Willie (Janice Rule), appears suspicious of the new girl. I suppose in this pyramid, Willie is the crone, and indeed, she and her elaborate paintings have a kind of bewitching effect on Pinky, drawing her in the way the moon draws the tide. The spying girl often observes Willie through water, or in relation to water, like in a fish tank or at the bottom of an empty pool, and every time, Willie can sense the staring almost immediately.

Altman makes great use of the murals that Willie paints (though in reality they were created by artist Bodhi Wind). She does small abstract work that can be hung on walls, though those she tends to riddle with bullet holes, which only calls further attention to their humble size. Her masterpieces, on the other hand, are large and impressive, covering walls or the floors of swimming pools. She depicts mythic creatures, alien and surreal, masculine and violent. In one, which also ends up being the final image of the movie, her bizarre creatures rant and rave at an object in the heavens, suggesting they are as primal as the apes at the start of 2001 [review]. One can presume she is painting the world she sees around her--the saloon is populated by men riding dirt bikes and shooting pistols--but maybe she also feels that desperate pull herself.

Everythng changes midway through 3 Women. In a surprising twist--though not really a spoilery one, it would be sort of impossible to spoil a movie this unconcerned with conventional narrative--after Millie turns on her, Pinky tries to drown herself. Feeling guilty, Millie stands by her while she is in a coma, only to find the girl who wakes up in that hospital bed is radically changed. Pinky is now the assertive one, and Millie can only do her best not to be completely subsumed, to have her entire identity swallowed. It takes another tragedy, this time involving Willie’s baby, to shake things up again. (Digression: It might be interesting to compare how Altman allows the birth to affect the lives of the main characters in a movie about women vs. how the birth scene at the end of his male mid-life crisis picture Dr. T and the Women [review] affects Richard Gere. Is there something to be said for why it is magical and liberating for the man and not for the ladies?)

I briefly considered tracking my feelings throughout my viewing of 3 Women, but that seemed to kind of miss the point of the experiment by intellectualizing it too much. It would also pull me away from the screen and make me focus on the paper, and 3 Women requires undivided attention. That said, in the first half of the movie, there is definitely a feeling of desire and hope, but that translates to pity, as well--which is an audience reaction, not a function of the storytelling. Neither Pinky nor especially Millie are that self-aware. Later, I felt in sync with Millie, as Pinky’s attempted suicide and the fall-out thereafter inspires anxiety in both the viewer and the actress. Duvall is a fascinating onscreen presence. She almost doesn’t seem like that good of an actress. Her delivery can be flat, and she can appear ill at ease. Her gawkiness can be hypnotic, in much the same way her Margaret Keane-like features make her beautiful. I am always hyper aware she is Shelley Duvall, whether she’s playing the scared wife in The Shining or Olive Oyl in Popeye. Yet I find myself enjoying watching her all the same.

It’s a demeanor that is ideally suited for a movie as intentionally dreamy as 3 Women. Shelley Duvall is practically surreal unto herself. This makes it all the more smart to cast Sissy Spacek opposite her. Spacek is naturally more grounded. As Pinky, she maintains the girl-next-door vibe she had in Badlands [review] and Carrie, and yet is utterly convincing when she becomes the more confident and mean of the two roommates. One could posit she’s putting the little-girl-lost routine to bed for good. Performance-wise, she is as natural on screen as Duvall is awkward. I would almost try to argue that all of 3 Women is Millie’s dream, given how menacing a figure her counterpart becomes, but the changes occur in Pinky’s vision. She observes, she sees the rifts, and she dives into them.

Altman approaches all this with a measured gaze. He doesn’t push the odd happenings too hard, he doesn’t go all wonky or psychedelic. Pinky’s early “visions” are more practical. The first superimposition of waves over the image, for instance, uses water that is actually in the scene. It’s only near the end that Altman steps away from this, indulging in one short yet meaningful dream sequence, a kind of quick run through the greatest hits of everything we’ve seen so far. He’s practically working at odds with his own skewed motives here. 3 Women deals with strange events, but Altman makes most of it seem as real as possible. Even the obvious symbols, like the pair of twins that work with Millie and Pinky, are really just twins who work with Millie and Pinky. Though, they do allow for some leading dialogue. “Do you think they know which one they are?” Pinky asks. “Maybe they switch back and forth.”

This earthiness and lack of show makes it easier to go along with the more obtuse occurrences, just as Gerald Busby’s distant and ominous music provides a throughline in the sometimes rambling narrative. Altman is far from indulgent, he’s giving the audience as much as required to keep them invested and on track. It’s only in the final scenes, when the lever on the cinematic slot machine is pulled one last time and the titular trio of women slides into its final roles, that some might end up truly confounded. I’ve seen the movie twice now and I’m still not sure if it’s a jackpot of “Ah-ha!” or otherwise some combination of “what’s that?” and “why this?”

I like it anyway. I am fascinated and enraptured, hypnotized by its vibrant colors the way Pinky is hypnotized by Willie’s paintings, every time I watch it. And I don’t worry about what is happening or what it’s trying to say. Which would mean Altman is successful in creating an all-in experience, one that entices and teases and provokes even if it never explains.

Note: 3 Women will be playing the NW Film Center on Sunday, January 18, as part of a Robert Altman weekend.