With The Company (even more so than with Miracle) you do miss the emphasis on personality, which has been the mainstay of American moviemaking almost from the beginning (including such dramatically diffuse movies as Altman's masterpieces McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) and Nashville (1975)). But Altman catches you up totally in the specifics of the ballet company's working processes. (The Company is even better in this way than Mike Leigh's amazing rehearsal scenes in his Gilbert and Sullivan movie Topsy-Turvy (1999).)
By contrast Miracle too readily jumps from realism to its overriding romance. It gets to you, but overall it's kind of a blurry experience. Altman sticks to his naturalistic recreations of the company's laborious efforts until he's sure we'll be able to follow his stunning leaps to the rapturous finished product. (He can bring out the swooning beauty of a piece just by showing one foot and the hem of the dancer's skirt sweep across a black background.) We don't need the enlarged context of national struggle as in Miracle, and the overwhelming effect of the dances on audiences doesn't have to be reported to us; we are the overwhelmed audience. What's most stunning of all, perhaps, is the fact that in his late 70s Altman is still capable of renewing his talent.
You can find this review and a lot besides at The Kitchen Cabinet.
Alan Dale is author of Comedy Is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies.
Article comments