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Altmanesque
— the word conjures up a peculiar brand of cinema which has
delighted, frustrated and outraged audiences for almost four decades.
Robert Altman’s untimely death — he was going strong even at 81
— means that we won’t get any more of the satirical mosaics that
made him an iconic figure in the film world. Still, his oeuvre is so
rich that re-runs and re-appraisals of his movies would continue
unabated.
The best thing about an Altman classic is that it gets better and better with every viewing. In fact, it’s hard to fully appreciate his films first time round, simply because they are packed with visual-aural flourishes and populated by a wide variety of characters. Parallel storylines, overlapping dialogue (irritating for some viewers), ensemble star cast, and improvised acting — the maestro’s hallmarks are unmistakable. Mira Nair couldn’t have asked for a better compliment when her Monsoon Wedding was called Altmanesque by some reviewers. Altman loved to cock a snook at authority. That explains to a certain extent why he never won an Oscar despite being nominated five times (The American film industry belatedly tried to make amends by giving him a lifetime achievement award earlier this year). "Hollywood is afraid of me, I guess," he once said. "I can’t make the kind of films they want to make, and the kind of films I make, they just don’t want to make." While shooting the Korean War comedy MASH (1970), which had incidentally been turned down by no less than 14 directors, he tricked the studio bosses into believing that he was making a patriotic film. They were not at all pleased to watch the rushes of the anti-war satire, which made an obvious reference to the then ongoing Vietnam conflict, but the enthusiastic response of test audiences prevented them from shelving the project. The movie turned out to be a commercial and critical success, catapulting Altman to the forefront of American directors. There was irreverence not only in the subject’s treatment but also in the style of film-making, as Altman threw convention to the winds in more ways than one. The path-breaking movie, which inspired a smash-hit TV series, won the Grand Prize at the Cannes festival, even though back home it lost the Oscar race to the well-made but not-so-great epic Patton. At the peak of his powers in the cynical seventies, Altman followed up MASH (mobile army surgical hospital) with two revisionist Westerns (McCabe and Mrs Miller; Buffalo Bill and the Indians), a freewheeling drama about two doomed lovers (Thieves Like Us), a social satire (A Wedding) and above all, Nashville (1975), a kaleidoscopic view of life in the capital of country music. Altman’s career suffered a slump in the 1980s with a succession of unremarkable films, but he staged a grand return with The Player (1992), in which he made Hollywood the target of his mordant humour. It was his way of hitting back at an unkind industry which had little respect or admiration for maverick directors like him. The story of a murdered screenwriter was merely a pretext to lay bare the no-holds-barred power struggle, corruption and one-upmanship in the movie business. The unhappy lives of South California residents, as portrayed in the stories of Raymond Carver, was the subject of Short Cuts (1993), which saw Altman at his bravura best. Pret-a-Porter (1994), a scathing attack on the fashion industry, bombed at the box-office and was panned by the critics. It wasn’t that bad a film, with the nude fashion parade at the end being a surreal masterstroke. The indefatigable Altman
made another comeback with Gosford Park (2001), using the
format of a murder mystery to expose the dark side of the English
class system. As an exploration of the symbiotic relationship between
masters and servants, it was no less powerful than Joseph Losey’s The
Servant (1963). Its big cast was virtually the who’s who of
contemporary British cinema, including names like Alan Bates, Maggie
Smith, Helen Mirren, Kristin Scott Thomas, Michael Gambon and Clive
Owen. True to form, Altman elicited superb performances from his
actors, for whom it was a privilege to work with the great director,
even if it was a minuscule cameo.
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