McCABE & MRS.MILLER (1971)
Grade: A-
Director: Robert Altman
Screenplay: Robert Altman, Brian McKay
Starring: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Rene Auberjonois, William Devane, Shelly Duvall, Keith Carradine
A young gunslinger stands at one end of a suspension bridge. At the other end a kind young man (Keith Carradine) who simply wants to cross the bridge. The gunslinger will not let him; he obstructs, badgering the poor fellow for sport. The young man has revealed his weakness: he doesn't want any trouble. Though the gunslinger is eager to test him and push him so he could kill him, which he does.
"Let me see your gun," the gunslinger demands.
The young man stammers slightly before reluctantly pulling it out with no intention of using it. The gunslinger shoots the young man dead as denizens of the town look on. The moment is directed with such off the cuff casualness that it generates far more of an impact than any kinetic gun battles staged by Peckinpah. Both of the actors chosen for the minor parts add additional layers to the scene. The kid who plays the gunslinger has a harmless, cherubic face, resembling a younger, chubbier Leonardo Di Caprio. As such, the character's actions take on more sinister implications that would have been absent had a more macho actor played him. We get the feeling that this kid has been raised in a culture in which killers are lionized, and cowardice is despised. He has found a prey that is weaker than him. Therefore it would be foolish not to attack. He's like a child playing COWBOYS AND INDIANS, only for real. Keith Carradine acts so kind and endearing, it's dismaying to see him die because of those very qualities. But I think the scene's ultimate effectiveness lies in its jarring placement. It happens mid-way through the film, and has nothing to do with the "story". But it also has everything to do with it.
McCABE AND MRS.MILLER is a Western, though unlike most. Its "hero" is indeed a mysterious stranger who rides into town as mysterious strangers often do in Westerns. He's also a drunk, and a gambler with little honor; he's not above shooting an enemy in the back. Julie Christie plays his "love interest", a surreptitious, drug-addicted madam with an incentive towards cash that supersedes everything else. She is a hooker, though one with a heart of coal.
These cleverly employed details (details that turn the usual cliches upside down and inside out) are trademarks of a director partial to deconstructing a genre rather than perpetuating it. Robert Altman does just that, exploding Western myths and putting his own in their place. This was a common practice of directors in the mid-1970's, many of whom were thrilled by the possibilities of reinventing genres that they grew up watching as kids. Speilberg did a similar deconstruction of the action-adventure film with JAWS (taking an ordinary B-movie and imbuing it with complex characterizations), as did George Lucas, for sci-fi, with STAR WARS (blending traditional Western or Samurai film elements into a golly-gee-whiz comic book space adventure). Unfortunately for those who enjoy seeing clever embodiments of familiar archetypes, the 80's brought back the straightforward (and frustratingly predictable) genre film.
Currently, big budget genre films tend to be directed by belligerent morons like Simon West and Michael Bay (both began as commercial and music video directors, which explains their unwavering affection for headache inducing images) who produce the same conventional shit we got in the 80's only at a higher decibel level. Though some unique visionaries seem to be coming out of the indie film fray and experimenting with the dreaded High Concept: One such visionary is Steven Soderbergh, the subversively original auteur who is one of the few indie directors to dare venture into mainstream film, and (here's the best part) actually make them with intelligence. The cycle of deconstruction came full circle in 1998 when Soderbegh turned the stale crime drama on its head with OUT OF SIGHT, a slyly ingenious deconstruction of the quintessential 1970's thriller.
McCABE AND MRS. MILLER is based on a conventional Western novel written by Edmund Naughton. Altman lobotomized the novel, taking its basic plot and improvising his way through the story's framework, as is his style. This hit or miss method has produced some masterpieces (M*A*S*H, SHORT CUTS), and just as many abysmal failures (QUINTET, READY TO WEAR). No one can deny that Altman was certainly one of the most prolific directors of his generation. The man turned out fifteen films in the 1970's alone. As a result many were amateurish, appearing as if they had just been made up on the spot, as was often the case. But when Altman's style works it is like nothing else. It sticks us in the midst of lives in progress, turning the viewer into a voyeur: we listen, but of course can never participate in the organic dialogues that unfold before us. In many of his great films, like my personal favorite, THE LONG GOODBYE (a deconstruction of the detective genre staring a schlumpy Elliot Gould as its beleaguered hero), or McCABE, the free flowing narrative heightens the tale. Altman works to scramble the customary paces of film, imbuing well-known situations with refreshing unfamiliarity.
McCABE may be his one true masterpiece, a film that does more than cleverly deconstruct; it brings us inside its world and inside its characters. True to Altman form, much of the speech is purposely muddied, and occasionally words are drowned out by each other. The dialogue is conversational (one man asks another if he should trim his facial hair, and the director keeps cutting back to this conversation as if it were important), and often amusingly so; we're not used to seeing characters make small talk in a Western. This is the antithesis of the average Sergio Leone flick; it's like viewing a slice of life that just happens to take place in the Old West. Because of this, the plot points seem to come informally and not when expected.
McCABE AND MRS.MILLER is set in a dilapidated frontier town blanketed with mud and snow. Interiors are dully lit by gas lamps illuminating dirty faces with a vague, red-yellow hue. Nothing is idealized in Altman's vision of the West, not even the hookers, who look just as dirty as the town.
Warren Beatty plays McCabe as a stubborn anti-hero with an unflappable cool the actor can't seem to shake. Beatty's persona is an intermittent parody of a traditional leading man and a rendering of one. He speaks in a fearlessly controlled tone, conveying his self-righteousness like the bad ass he thinks he is. And that self-righteousness is his characters' inevitable downfall.
Julie Christie plays the madam (McCabe's business partner), Mrs. Miller. When the two meet, they immediately dislike each other, trading insults as most future lovers often do in the movies. We naturally expect them soften up, and fall in love. That never happens, though they do have cold, calculated sex. Their relationship doesn't go where it's "supposed" to, and I am forever thankful for both of their fates. Altman closes his film with some understated, lyrically profound shots that are as haunting and poignant as they are simplistic.
To call McCABE a simple exercise in genre deconstruction would be a misrepresentation. It's a work that is alive with emotion and poetry. It is stunning visually, not because its images are gorgeous in any typical way, but because they are foreboding and ominous, as they should be. This is Altman's most atmospheric film, and I believe, his most emotionally fulfilling. But don't go looking for it expecting pressure cooker histrionics or you'll be disappointed. Go in expecting a well told, subtly nuanced tale of people unknowingly floating to their destinies.
Altman's greatest films have much in common; they rely on naturalistic, meandering encounters, languidly building to a substantial close. And it works the best when the characters are fascinating and multifaceted. That is the case with this film. The seemingly inconsequential moments add up to something very consequential.