Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Bill McNeal (A) on February 12, 2006 at 12:50:57

Oh, all right. I'm being provocative to attract some attention to this one.

Google & you'll get some glowing reviews -- of the DVD. I mean, it seems that it took 30 years to "get" this one.

Me too. For one thing, the casting is just incredible, including (or perhaps especially) the bit players & extras (recruited from Synanon) that give scenes like the racetrack an overwhelmingly realistic flavor. I do not know of any Holywood film ever to do this so well. And the settings match. For instance, if you watch the Ray Charles flick one of the things you sense is just wrong is the nightclub scenes, which seem overly cleaned-up. Ratchet up a notch & you get similar scenes in Atman's "Kansas City", which is better but still just doesn't "get it".

But the bar scene, the track, the fight arena, the apartment, the poker room.... in this one it's ALL REAL. (Actually, the poker room was staged, and even Californai lowball players have been known to express disbelief that this is not a real one.)

If you were alive and conscious and in America in 1974, this will be apparent immediately upon viewing.

Spoilers follow. Do not proceed unless you have seen this. I mean it. Don't. Go rent it. It's pretty cheap to buy. Stop scrolling now.

I said I meant it.

So go sediment yourself if you're "just curious".

What are you, yellow?....

Anyhow.

Certainly the "naming the 7 dwarfs" improvised scene between the two main characters (loaded in the bar) is magnificent. In fact, tho, it's just a culmination of a spectacular "Altman weave" of audio and visual mischief (bare-butted character to the lower left, mix two or three conversations with bar noises).

The breakfast scene brings back some memories, I presume? You rascal, you...

Why use Reno? Why not Vegas? I mean, it's 5 more hours away. But baby, this one reeks of reality. From getting off the bus after a rain, all gassed up & ready to go (apologies to Lou Reed here), to the weirdly-placed poker room -- tell me, would ANY Hollywood production these days include that hallway?

So many scenes in this one stick with you. Really.

Re the end: certainly a typical Altman switch on a "standard" ending wherein the miscreants almost make it then flop as they deserve to.

In fact, the ending, to me, blasts it up. The main character has an epiphany -- it will never be enough. The casino setting practically fractures in his mind (and the audience's). The revels are ended. What will happen for him now we will never know. We are left with a simple spinning wheel set to a tune. Of fortune.

God bless you for this one, Robert Altman.