Film director Robert Altman has died. He was 81.
The folks who talk about “cinema” as opposed to “movies” love Altman films, but I myself have something of a love-hate relationship with them, the best-known of which is probably the original version of M*A*S*H. I admire Altman’s strong artistic identity — you can easily pick out his trademark style, described in the article I linked above as “…huge ensemble casts… improvisation and overlapping dialogue… [and] long tracking shots that would flit from character to character” — as well as his iconoclasm and his insistence on treating the viewer as if we have a brain in our heads. However, I’ve got to be honest: I really don’t enjoy his movies very much. They strike me more as things to be appreciated, if that makes sense. His signature overlapping dialogue, while admittedly naturalistic, is frequently frustrating, both because it’s sometimes difficult to differentiate from the background noise of a scene (I find M*A*S*H especially guilty of this problem) but also because it seems like I’m always just getting interested in one particular conversation when we pull away and go off in search of another. Watching an Altman film is sometimes reminiscent of a night in a strip club, one long tease that ultimately leaves me wanting.
Curious, then, that I actually quite liked his final film, A Prairie Home Companion, which, fittingly enough, was all about death and the passing of institutions. Altman was definitely an institution, a maverick and auteur who emerged from the “personal cinema” movement of the ’70s but never sold out or got bogged down in grandiose ambitions like so many other directors of that era (Lucas, Spielberg, Coppola, de Palma — I’m looking at you guys!). I mourn his loss more for what he represented than because I was a big fan. But I still mourn.
Here are a few interesting links:
- An extremely detailed obituary from the British newspaper The Guardian
- A remembrance from my local film critic, Sean P. Means, who met Altman at the Sundance Film Festival a few years back
- Jaime J. Weinman’s thoughts, including a video clip to illustate a point
- David Poland’s blog entry, which includes the long list of Altman’s films
- And finally, a compilation of Altman-related pieces by the great Roger Ebert, who has been sorely missed since his medical problems took him out of the reviewing loop
