The Unseen #12: A Perfect Couple

Why’d I Buy It?: Came with Altman Boxset.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: See A Wedding, Thieves Like Us.

How Was It?: The film follows a middle aged Greek man, whose dominated by his tyrannical father and freak show of a family. A computer dating service improbably hooks him up with a young backup singer for the rock band “Keeping Them Off The Street.”

Pretty damned good. Flawed yes, but pretty good. It’s maybe the gentlest movie that Altman ever made. No one’s really a bad guy here, even the walking punch lines like Dooley’s family and the animal obsessed blind date he goes on are looked at with something closer to bemused wonderment then real anger. It’s also perhaps uncoincedently the most standard movie he’s ever made. Aside from a few scenes that are shot like signature Altman (particularly the bands rehearsal scenes), and his keen sense of humanity, there’s little to differentiate A Perfect Couple from just about every other romantic comedy made in the late seventies/early eighties.

The trick to it though is that you rather improbably come to like this mismatched neurotic couple. The leads are played by the great Paul Dooley (the dad in Sixteen Candles) with the air of someone who knows this could be their last shot at happiness and Marta Heflin with an endearing air of vulnerability. The film begins with some easy going gentle comic set pieces and the whole thing stays at that energy level. Like A Wedding, A Perfect Couple is little more then an appealing amble of a movie and those expecting Altman to make some kind of big statement will probably be disappointed. This is definitely Altman at his most low key.

There is one major major problem with the movie. It’s practically a musical. Well that’s no problem you say this is Altman, he made Nashville, Prairie Home Companion, The Company and Freaking Popeye for the love of God! He and music go together like Peas and Carrots combined with Peanut Butter And Chocolate! One would think so yes, but there is the minor detail that the music in A Perfect Couple is bad. No like really bad. Jessica Harper in Phantom Of The Paradise bad. Fearlessly combining the worst aspects of Folk, Disco, and Rock into a cocktail that will make the idea of slitting your wrists sound like being swept off by an angel compared to what you face.

Anyway A Perfect Couple works extraordinarily well, as a romance, character study, and slice of seventies LA life, just be sure to pack along cotton for your ears, and remember if you do accidentally hear some of the music please seek help before you do anything rash. This year alone Keeping Them Off The Streets has clamed one hundred and thirteen victims, please don’t become just another statistic.

The Unseen #10: A Wedding

Why’d I Buy It?: Came with Altman Box Set.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: See Thieves Like Us.

How Was It?: Quite a pleasant surprise actually. While Thieves Like Us was a virtual showcase for what I find frustrating about Altman, A Wedding equally highlights the qualities of his that I find so appealing and valuable about his work. His warmth, sharp eye and ear, and underrated sense of humor.

A Wedding was by all accounts, including his own, Altman’s attempt to top Nashville. Featuring a cast of hundreds rather then mere dozens, and spread out over a zippy (for Altman) two hours, A Wedding is the logical endpoint of Altman’s large canvas films, in the same way that Brewster McCloud is the Vanishing Point for his strange insular movies.

How’d it work out? Well being that Nashville is often cited as one of the greatest American movies ever made, and A Wedding is usually dismissed as only a curio if that, perhaps you can guess. And though A Wedding isn’t exactly a masterpiece, it’s jumbled and confused, I can’t help but love it a little.

It’s was the loosest, funniest film that Altman made since MASH, and would remain such until A Prairie Home Companion. Centering around a two large families, a nouveu rich group and a family of old money with more mongrels in their midst then they'd care to admit. They unite for a Marriage that everyone aside from the principles seem to realize is a terrible idea. The family returns to a palatial mansion where they drink, gossip, carouse, fuck, die, and suffer natural disasters.

While the film is hampered by it’s large stunt cast, and it’s hummingbird like attention span, no one really gets a whole lot of screen time. You come to care about the characters almost inspite of yourself. Altman was such a gifted artist that there he was able to capture a subjects humanity in a few quick sure handed strokes. He slips a strangely affecting middle aged love story into the mix, featuring a very game Carol Brunett.

Despite the lack of a lot of screen time, Altman never reduces anyone to caricature either. His reputation as a misanthrope was always overblown. Nobody as interested in people as he could simply hate them. Maybe it’s the natural joviality of the wedding, the films lighter tone, or the obvious affection he has for some of his most unlovable characters but that’s particularly easy to see in A Wedding.

The film has a wicked sense of humor, even playing a running gag with the corpse of Lillian Gish, kind of like playing a running gag with the Virgin Mary Of Cinema, that manages to be funny as it is tasteless, and even kind of sweet.

A Wedding might not be a masterpiece, but make no mistake it’s Altman at the very top of his game. And it’s always pleasurable to watch an old master at work.

The Unseen #8: Thieves Like Us

Why’d I Buy It?; It completed my seventies Altman collection.

Why Haven’t I Watched It Yet?: Though I’d never deny his status as a grandmaster of cinema, Altman’s films, with precious few exceptions (McCabe and Ms. Miller, Nashville, Prairie Home Companion) are work for me, as opposed to pleasure. That’s not to say the films aren’t great, but that I have to make a conscience decision to watch them, which I don’t have to make when popping on A Scorsese, Truffaunt, Peckinpah, Kubrick, or Coen film. He’s a filmmaker always slightly at distance for me, like Monte Helleman.

How Was It?: Thieves Like Us, encapsulates a lot of what’s great and what’s difficult about Altman. There’s an unforced naturalism to the era, about as far from the glamorization and fetishized portrayals of Public Enemies, Boxcar Bertha, and Bonnie and Clyde as you can get. I’ve never seen a period drama that seems so unforced and unimpressed with it’s art direction.

Equally unforced is the easy humanism that marks the best of Altman’s work. The movie works best when capturing the quiet rhythms of human behavior, and with Shelley Duvall at her most appealing and vulnerable, and Robert Carradine, in a rare lead turn.

Unfortunately there’s a fine line between natural and meandering, and unlike in his best films, Altman is none too careful about crossing it. At the risk of sounding like a philistine much of Thieves Like Us is a frankly boring movie. Filled with long improvised scenes that don’t really go anywhere. For every scene which effortlessly captures the day to day rhythm of life, like when a group of people slowly gravitate to a radio playing The Shadow, there’s a long roundabout scene where a guy hits on his own niece.

The fact is, that this, like many Altman films, rises and falls on the quality of it’s company, which is simply not of the first water. The characters, aside from Carradine’s likeably callow performance, and Duvall’s sympathetic turn, don’t make much of an impression. I hate to use the word likable, but it applies, no one here is particularly interesting, or seems worth spending time with. And since spending time with these characters is pretty much all the movie is (where you really expecting an intricate heist in an Altman flick?) this poses a significant problem.

Despite it’s many charms and strong attributes, Thieves Like Us, remains almost purposefully, second tier Altman.