Robert Altman: An Appreciation - Page 2

Skipping to 1982, Come Back To The Five And Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean would become not only my favorite Altman movie, but the one most difficult to watch. Again, it was the cast that had me going to the cinema to see this movie in the first place. Cher was the big draw for me. I'd seen her in both Good Times and Chasity and I remembered being appalled that an esteemed director such as Robert Altman would use her in a serious film. I'm sure that I was not the only one that day to leave the theater stunned by her presence on the silver screen as much as by the tale that he wove.  Despite the familiarity of what I consider his long-running theme of what we show and what we hide behind, Altman continued to bring different nuances his vision.  In the case of Come Back..., his view of exquisitely fragile and shattered pathos in an extremely small town was shocking to me in its first screening.  The performances in the movie were so raw and oozing with pain, that I felt like I was bleeding inside for the characters at the end.

The fact that this movie has maintained that feel despite repeated viewings and time passed since its release is the ultimate tribute in my eyes to what Mr. Altman was all about.  The American Dream wasn't really about reaching goals, monetary and materialistically, in the movies that he made.  In RobertAltmanLand, the theme was survival, not always of the fittest. Despite the odds, any visages we all hide behind are what we need to make it through the night. 

Robert B. Altman died of complications from cancer, at the age of 81 years, on Monday, November 20, 2006. With forty-eight films under his belt, he received five Oscar nominations. While none of his films ever won that prestigious accolade, earlier this year the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences awarded him with a Lifetime Achievement Oscar. During his acceptance speech, Altman stripped away his own camouflage — a decade earlier, he'd survived a heart transplant.  

In his own words, "I didn't make a big secret out of it, but I thought nobody would hire me again," he said after the ceremony. "You know, there's such a stigma about heart transplants, and there's a lot of us out there."

The irony of his having been given this honor, after beginning his career in television in the 1950s and working his way through the ranks, months before his death?  He could have made a damn fine movie using that as a premise as well.

Article Author: tink

Formerly a Public Relations/Artist Development maven in the music biz, I
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