Robert Altman Dies At 81 Leaving A Legacy Of Film - Page 2

Instead, I remember the films I have seen and still must see where he gives us all of the story of America and being American and being human and having hope amid chaos. These are the legacies left behind in his films. These were always his answer to the looming Angel of Death that Bergman clothes in black and a scythe and that Altman dressed in a white trench-coat, always a pale woman of beauty.

This man directed his life like his films. They are strong and independent and take the path less traveled. The movies start, as M.A.S.H. did, with dialog here and there under-lying and over-laid. It was a new thing, this dialog that was not always linear but rounded like life where conversations are simultaneous, off on tangents, in opposition and, with Radar, even prophetic and un-noticed, anticipating Henry's thoughts or even making them up for him.

The Altman plots are strong but the characters are so much stronger still, the feelings felt and the thoughts thought. Plot and action are fine and are not forgotten but stories are weaved not by them but around them just as our lives seek lines and fine curves that strangely collide now and again. Altman peoples his films with many characters and their stories often meet now or later, once or more as the world he created rebounds with the trajectories of lives lived quietly and conservatively, or frenetically balanced on the edge. In Short Cuts the life of Los Angeles circles and rumbles with the coming of an earthquake and, even more shattering, the tap of a car on a boy, the beautiful adolescent angst of a teen-aged musician straddling her cello and the many paths of life and death.

A master has died, and although he was nominated time and again for the golden prize he never got it for a film - only receiveving an "honorary Oscar." He did not do what the conservative, toe-the-line directors did to keep peace in the studios. He made his films in the 1970s with 6 hits in 5 years - six "masterly" films starting with 1970's M.A.S.H. with its helicopter sounds almost drowning the sound of war and the little love affairs that we could laugh lustily about while the death swirled around. The surgical chaos is almost controlled by our hero, Hawkeye, and we knew it was a Viet-Nam anti-war contribution from Altman's days in the World War all wrapped up in Korean confusion. (Perhaps it was also "Suicide is Painless" — the M.A.S.H. theme written by son Michael who was then 14 -- that helped set the scene in a VietNamic Korea.)

Article Author: Howard Dratch

Howard writes on science, books, movies and news for Blogcritics and on his own blogs from the border of North and Central America.

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