Robert T. Self,
Robert Altman’s Subliminal Reality.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
ISBN 0 8166 3790
332pp
US$19.95 (pb)
(Review copy supplied by University of Minnesota Press)
Robert Self examines in detail twenty-one of Robert Altman’s thirty-four films in terms of “subliminal reality”: it is a term taken from Altman’s assertions about his work, about what he attempts to capture in his films: “the unspoken, and unspeakable, dimensions in human interactions” (vii). Self positions this “subliminal reality” as an art cinema, a modernism: one that involves both a storytelling and a reading strategy unlike that of classical Hollywood narrative. Instead of a logical storytelling structure with a beginning, a middle and an end, the kind of engagement Altman’s art cinema invites is poetic, atmospheric and nonlinear. Many levels of meaning exist in these films. This divergent strategy places certain demands upon its readers whereby they “must construct implicit or symptomatic meanings from the tensions between textual signifiers and ‘hidden’, ‘deeper’,’disguised’, or ‘repressed’ meaning” (3).
The theory Self draws on and applies is eclectic, and it ranges from the firm foundations of David Bordwell (“The art cinema as a mode of film practice”) to the more elusive writings of Roland Barthes (S/Z: An Essay). It includes expert writers on Altman’s films, such as Robert Kolker, Altman’s reflections on his work and critical opinion. Self does not interrogate the theory he employs; rather, the theory seems to both blend with and support his argument of what constitutes an American art cinema. At the same time, Self recognizes that not all agree with his views. For example, some historians deny the existence of an American art cinema (266). In this way, Self’s approach goes far beyond the categorical; he not only gives an in-depth analysis of the films, but he also situates the films within an historical context and does not fail to address issues of current debate.
The films are not read chronologically; rather, they are grouped appropriately, to form a structure of three parts. The first part, “Narrative formalities” includes an analysis of Kansas City (USA, 1996), as well as the earlier film MASH (USA, 1970). The second part, “Identities in patriarchy”, updates a gender analysis by including The Gingerbread Man (USA, 1998) and Dr. T & the Women (USA, 2000). Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (USA, 1976), Nashville (USA, 1975), The Player (USA, 1992) and Pret-a-Porter (USA, 1994) are examples of reflexivity and they come under the third part heading of “Putting on the show”. Many of the films, however, seem to crisscross into the different headings and match with like-wise appropriateness. All, however, since That Cold Day in the Park (USA/Canada, 1969), and from MASH in particular mark a transition away from classical Hollywood cinema.
Self begins by looking at why the popular American audience has dismissed Altman’s films as “insignificant, dissatisfying and unreadable” (7). The reason for this is that they are concerned with a storytelling unlike that of traditional Hollywood with its fantasy and its happy endings: “The films resist conventional understandings of the real and regularly tell stories with a lyrical strategy of lacuna, fragmentation, and indirection” (7). Self takes Kansas City as an example for reading the art cinema more like a piece of music than a story. Jazz, in this film, is seen as an alternative form of sexual and racial empowerment: “In Kansas City , jazz affords its audiences and especially its performers an identity of energy, invention, competition, and a semblance of authority” (14). Music is not only central to Kansas City , but also to an understanding of the Altman canon. From That Cold Day in the Park to Cookie’s Fortune (USA, 1999) “music continues to provide central affective and structural dimensions to the subliminal reality of Altman’s art-cinema narration” (30).
Altman is shown to be an important figure in the late sixties, early seventies: in the emergence of a new American cinema. This cinema, Self explains, finds its roots in the international art cinema, in both the post-World War 11 innovations on narrative style and 1920s modernism. Its characteristics are those of authorial expressivity, narrative open-endedness, cinematic reflexivity, psychological insecurity and contradictory points of view. Self argues that these features are both famous in Altman’s films, as well as in the international art cinema (30). Through a close analysis of sound in MASH , Self reveals a complex and fluid practice: one that shifts between layers of diegetic, onscreen, synchronous sound, and offscreen, nonsimultaneous, displaced diegetic sound. Unlike classical narrative, sound, in this film, is not at the service of dramatic realism. In MASH Altman’s “realistic” and fragmented use of sound works both formally and thematically: it not only disrupts the classical style of storytelling, the authority of discourse, but it also disrupts military authority as well (38).
It becomes evident that, with the art cinema, the audience is involved in a “realistic” experience unlike that of classical Hollywood. The art cinema emphasizes narration rather than story and it has an “objective” realism about it that is more like life itself; it calls attention to its manner of rhythmic systems, its narration, rather than to the chronological realistic events of the story (46). This division between classical Hollywood and the art cinema is neither simplistically defined nor clearly delineated. The art cinema both derives from and lies between the classic and the modernist practice. Self speaks of how American filmmakers of the 1970s were highly influenced by the French New Wave: a movement that both employed and critiqued Hollywood classical cinema. Self argues that “… Altman’s films ask to be seen as extensions of the Hollywood tradition reread through the practice of the international art cinema” (45).
Features of the international art cinema are shown to have evolved from critical practice: from film movements such as early Soviet cinema, Italian neorealism and from directors such as Bergman, Fellini and Kurosawa. It is a practice, Self argues, that is evident in Altman’s films (47). Altman’s employment of the real world, real settings and locales, are given as examples. Similarly, actors are also evident of a realism that is unlike Hollywood classicism. They are uncharacteristic of the star system: they often have an unpopular physiognomy, such as Shelley Duvall’s tall skinny body. Heroes are deflated, such as McCabe (Warren Beatty) in McCabe and Mrs. Miller (USA 1971). These characters are not always comfortable to watch and they lack erotic appeal. Large casts and multiple stories also generate a “sense of the “realistic”. They allow for chance encounters, the momentary and unexpected existence one finds in daily life (54-55).
In “Generic art” Self examines how the new American cinema substitutes “the signature of the author” for genre, adapts and develops popular generic forms and brings to this appropriation a modernist sensibility:
Where the classical narrative genres once provided audiences with a conventional, familiar syntax and semantics that allowed an easy reading of the story, the genres provided auteurs in the American art cinema structural frames within which to arouse and then challenge rather than satisfy audience expectation. (76)
Altman’s films are shown to interrogate and subvert genre, especially the romance genre: they favor open endings as opposed to the story closure of a happy and united couple (80). McCabe and Mrs. Miller is given as a prime example of how Altman subverts the western genre and gives new meanings to an understanding of the American West. Self is careful to note, however, that while the art cinema subverts story it does not destroy story; rather, it works to “activate visual rhythmic systems as counterpoints to the story as well as supplements to it” (93).
One of the fine observations in this section on genre, is the recognition that Altman’s films have undergone some change. The nineties films are seen to have returned “more aggressively with an art-cinema than with generic forms” (102). They are less likely to remodel popular genres, as do the early ones, and yet they “continue to reflect a commitment to the modernist impulses of irony, experimentation, reflexivity and social critique” (103). The later films are noted to be more playful and satiric than the earlier ones, but no less pessimistic.
Part Two “Identities in patriarchy” divides the films into those of masculine subjects and those of resisting women. Self places these subjects within the larger picture of modernism: within the twentieth-century psychology and philosophy of the fractured self, “the individual as a social construct” (107). Secret Honor (USA 1984), a film play concerning the torments of Richard Nixon, Tanner’88 (USA 1988), a television series about a fictional presidential candidate placed in a real campaign, and The Gingerbread Man (USA 1998), a film about a lawyer who in turn becomes an outlaw, are works which feature these fractured male figures. Even when there is apparent coherence, such as in The Gingerbread Man, these films are shown to be exemplary of the diminution of masculine authority.
The second chapter in this section discusses films that are primarily concerned with women: That Cold Day, Images (USA/UK/Ireland 1972), 3 Women (USA 1977) Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (USA 1982), Kansas City and Cookie’s Fortune (1999). Self begins by addressing accusations of misogyny and eventually shows that there are two contradictory ways of reading these films:
Inasmuch as these open narratives actualize the female voice within a male discourse, it is possible to read them as further examples of the effort of Hollywood cinema to effect an authority over women. It is also possible to read these Altman films as inversions of the hostility toward woman(173).
Women are situated in subordinate roles under patriarchy; at the same time, situating women within these negative roles can be a release of energy. These films reveal the fears of women and their sexual inadequacies; it is also argued that these films reveal resistance and that the depiction of women is subversive of both economic and cultural dominance. Identities splinter through a mirroring, a doubling – a disturbing and psychological art component that links artist, child and adult in Images and 3 Women. Self argues that this is a stylistic concern as much as it is a thematic one:
“The art cinema assumes both formal and thematic postures of social resistance..” (165). The reflexivity in Cookie’s Fortune, for example, doubles the director of the film with the actor in the film. Camille’s (Glenn Close) direction of Oscar Wilde’s play Salome provides a multiple vision: “Altman adapts Wilde, but so does Camille” (168). Psychological disruption interrogates the text and the appropriation of Salome’s dance becomes “self-revelation and performance as murderous resistance” (171).
In the final section “Putting on the show” Self examines Altman’s show business films in terms of reflexivity. Nashville, Buffalo Bill, The Player and Pret-a-Porter are examples of films “that take as their subjects different aspects of popular culture and entertainment” (180). The importance of reflexivity in these films is to discover a subliminal reality that critiques its culture. Self reiterates a position that Altman is liberal rather than radical in this regard (188). He addresses the problematic nature of these reflexive films: of how they are a part of the show business culture, the same show business culture that they criticize. Buffalo Bill is an example of how the art cinema “engages in social critique and exposes its own participation in the predominate values of the culture” (210). The subliminal reality, the ideology, of this film involves both makers and audience: “The show business has appropriated history for patriotism and profit” (210). Self regards The Player as the most cinematically reflexive in this group of films. He gives a detailed rendering of the scenes that make up the sequence in which Griffin (Tim Robbins) first calls on the fantasy figure, June (Greta Scacchi). This sequence is not only evidence of another story within the stories of the film, but it is also evidence of a reflexivity that critiques the male gaze within the cinema.
It is a special pleasure to read the chapter on Pret-a-Porter. By making one aware of the film’s subliminal reality, Self gives appreciation to a film that was disregarded by criticism and was not taken seriously. This film forces the viewer to read between the lines through an act of “stargazing” – one has to pick out the “real” from the fictional. The strength of the film, for Self, lies in its juxtaposition of fiction and reality: “The fiction reflects upon, derives from, illustrates, examines, critiques, and ultimately is fascinated by the power of the show” (227). The music, the framing and filming of the fashion sequences, Self calls them “the most vibrant and energetic and assertive images in all of Altman’s work” (238).
The final chapter doesn’t seem to quite fit under the section title of “Putting on the Show”. It is called “Worlds elsewhere” and it analyzes the multi-narrative film, Short Cuts (1993). This chapter does, however, end the book nicely in the way it connects reflexivity with the art-cinema: in an interactive process that gives potential to the “writerly” text (247-248). This chapter mainly discusses Altman’s adaptation of Raymond Carver’s minimalist short stories and the reading strategy they demand. Questions of fidelity to the text are of a different order here than they are to the “already-read play meanings that classical narrative assumes” (248). Altman’s faithfulness to Carver lies less in an explanation of the stories, than it does in “the intertextual effects of those stories” (256). These effects constitute the silences, the ones the reader finds through their interaction with the text: the subliminal realities.
Self offers both a fine and accessible way of reading Altman’s films within the context of modern American art cinema. This book is valuable for differentiating between the modes of classical and ‘art’ cinema and for recognizing the existence and features of an American art cinema; it is neither simplistic nor purist in doing so. Self shows the important contribution Altman’s films have made to the American Renaissance, in retrospection and in the possible continuation and development of an American art cinema.
June Werrett,
Australia.
Created on: Friday, 27 June 2003 | Last Updated: Friday, 27 June 2003