Few people can do genre revisions like Robert Altman.
Probably because Altman doesn't really care either way; he's just making a film.
Underneath the palm trees and drug-induced hangover of the West Coast in the early 70's is a rotting corpse. Marlow just happens to still live there, like a fish permanently out of water that must now learn how to breathe in the air. He will, Altman suggests, by the end.
Mysteries are everywhere but the most pressing ones involve people and guns and money.
Lots of people ask questions.
Do they get the answers? I can't remember.
Marlow's cat. Marlow's neighbors.
Marlow's apartment building. Celebrity impersonation guard.
Altman includes these things and they become the fabric that is both essential and non-essential.
Narratively, they are not very important. Cinematically, they are what must be.
Altman has a way with those things.
By the end, we have witnessed the end of an era and the beginning of another.
A bit like McCabe & Mrs. Miller in that way, but slightly hopeful about the possibility of adaptation. Marlow has changed by the end.
He is simply tired of it all.
Tired of being used. Tired of allegations.
Tired of plots and subplots.
Tired of lies. Tired of distrust.
It may not feel radical, but it is.
And then there is that stare. The look on Marlow's face as he listens to Terry explain it all.
No epiphany; no a-ha moment.
Only the cold heart of man staring back at the walking dead.
film journal entry: 04.22.2013
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