A Guy Thing

Lead someone blindfolded (who also lacks access to the film industry publicity machine) into "A Prairie Home Companion" and, given any five minute segment, it should be immediately obvious that this could only be a film by Robert Altman. And one of his best.

What a felicitous combination of talents. The performers are a joy to watch as they are given long leashes by Altman, who lets them sing, talk all over each other, improvise, laugh, and interact with seeming abandon. Even Lindsay Lohan, despite the tarnish of her public appearances, car wrecks, shopping sprees, and whatever else appears in the tabloids, comes across appealingly and demonstrates her thespian licks.

I even liked the bad jokes sung by Woody Harrelson and John C. Riley. I especially liked the bad jokes. The bad jokes, and Meryl Streep, and Lily Tomlin, and the unnamed musicians in the background, and even Garrison Keeler, whose big head and unhurried demeanor are fascinating to watch.

The movie has been adequately rated, reviewed, and recapped by countless critics already and there's little point in recounting details one more time or giving my own rating, one way or the other.

But given the recent discussions against people who theorize about movies in general -- as opposed to those who give individual consumer reports on specific films (see http://crockheadabroad.blogspot.com for the fray) -- I simply want SIMPLY to point out some possible benefits of watching movies in the context of film history.

Take the "auteur theory." That posits that a film is the product primarily of the director. Of course, most movies are a collective, labor- and cost-intensive art, but you have to blame somebody, right? Why not the director?

Robert Altman was one of the first to use overlapping dialogue, for one thing. Studio execs shook their heads and said, "They're all talking at once!" when he made movies like "California Split" and "Nashville" back in the 1970s. No one has really done this better -- or at all. "A Prairie Home Companion" is like a three-ring circus to watch and listen to.

I never understood why people, such as Pauline Kael, dismissed the auteur theory. Many, if not most, people think of the lead actor, the movie star, as the "owner" of the movie. Have you seen the new Jim Carrey movie?, they will ask. But I prefer to think of "Eternal Sunshine of the Endless Mind" as a film by Charlie Kauffman and Michel Gondry. "The Truman Show" is a Peter Weir film. OK, I'll give you "Bruce Almighty" as a Jim Carrey movie. There was a director, but I'm hesitant to call him an auteur.

Using the auteur theory, you can appreciate the bad movies of Robert Altman, too. I recently watched one of his worst, "Quintet," which was recently released on DVD. (It stars Paul Newman, who has been the talk of that aforementioned argument on another blog in relation to "The Sting" and "Cars.") "Quintet" is set in a frozen future science fiction world (shot in Canada) of violence, board games, and ice. It makes very little sense and has so little sense of humor, Altman must have had stomach cramps throughout the entire shooting. I sometimes think he only wanted to make a movie set in snow and ice to balance the film he shot in rain and night ("McCabe and Mrs. Miller") and to add another genre revision to his belt, science fiction to match the gangster film, the western, the war movie, etc. etc.

By now, Altman has no need to tackle genre films (although "Gosford Park" might be considered his British comedy of manners genre film); he is a genre unto himself.

Visually, "A Prairie Home Companion" brings to mind another great auteur pair: Joseph von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich. A whole batch of their collaborations were recently released in a fine DVD set and watching "The Devil is a Woman" again, I was made dizzy by the insane visual flourishes of even the first ten minutes. Who cares about the story? There are smoke, scrims, fabrics, clashing designs, crowds, clothes, a veritable snowstorm of textures and designs all thrown at once. It is madness. And gorgeous. It can play on in the background like television wallpaper, eye exercises.

"A Prairie Home Companion," particularly in the dressing room scenes of Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep, uses another madly detailed design scheme, with multiple mirrors, draped clothes, words scribbled on Lindsey Lohan's jeans, intricate visual details abounding that -- combined with the lush and overlapping dialogue -- dazzle the mind more than all the computer generated effects in King Kong and Lord of the Rings combined.

I'll take natural, well thought out mise-en-scene any day over fake computer effects. I'm not as impressed by hoards of attacking Orcs or Trojans as I am by the waving green sea Fellini designed out of garbage bags in "And The Ship Sails On." One is photography and design; the other is data bits.

I have rambled on beyond my time. The point I was trying to make, and I think I have lost by this point, is that the more one studies and compares film, the more one can appreciate and enjoy film. The Crockhead and other know-nothing, Ding an sich film reviewers mock history and theory. I have to go now and return my NetFlix DVDs before the postman arrives. I didn't even get around to Guy Debord or Guy Noir or semiotics, for that matter, but they will have to wait.

Swimming before semiotics, I always say.