comment #1

Mr. Muckle says ...

It's an interesting read, but how does he end up with this?:

"It's exactly the type of gesture -- luxurious, utterly useless, but alive and generous to its core -- that makes Altman's films breathe as they do. Conceived outside of a Petri dish, content to convey no more than the doings of a pair of small-time schnooks, they come as close as any contemporary art to making us feel what it’s like to be alive."

Jeez Louise, did he just run out of steam at the end? If anybody needs some kind of art to make them feel what it's like to be alive, how alive are they really? No, that's a sublimely silly statement. I know what it feels like to be alive because I'm alive, not for any other reason in the universe, and especially not a movie.

(Not to say that Altman's films are not also sublime.)

comment #2

Larry says ...

This might be my favorite Altman film, but it's hard to recommend since most people find it so aimless.

comment #3

jeffmcm says ...

So Mr. Muckle...why do you watch movies? Or experience any art form, for that matter, if you do?

comment #4

Mr. Muckle says ...

Well, jeffmcm, I'll never admit to watching movies in order to feel alive (even if there might be some truth to that, given the pervasiveness of boredom). Wouldn't you find it a little embarrassing to admit such a thing, that your life is so pathetic that watching a film represents "feeling alive" to you?

No, film, TV, art, and the like is an abstraction of something . . . taking a multidimensional phenomenon (being alive) and representing it in fewer dimensions, like a painting represents 3D visual experience in 2D. This is not expansion, it's reduction, and OK, nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes.

I'm a creative type myself, but that does seem more and more useless and uninteresting to me. The reality of feeling bored is more true to "feeling alive" than going to a film to escape that feeling. IMO, anyway. What about you?