I saw this movie again last night and, like an old friend with which you had a bit of disagreement long ago but you are happy to see again, I found it most enjoyable. Well, enjoyable by an artistic, cinematic point of view. Certainly not by a human point of view since at the end, the shallowness and downright ugliness of some of the characters, came back to make me feel again that lingering subtle sense of depression at life being sometimes so unpalatable. That same bitterness at the back of your mouth after a not-so-honorable spree the night before. And yet the movie is one that you will never say: I've had enough of this. You do want to follow the different personas, their briefly brushing of self-contained lives, hoping a new story will develop, a redeeming character will appear. But no one enters from the left to shed light. Everyone is self-absorbed.
I looked at the some of the other reviews to see if someone else had my same hunch and did not find any reference to what I think is Altman's inspiration for this canvas of American lives: Federico Fellini. Where La Dolce vita was a large fresco of a certain society at a certain point in time, here Altman wants to represent on a large, spread out mural a number of characters loosely connected or separated by their own materialism, hoping that, in the end, what the viewer sees is the colors and shape of a bustling city that can only be L.A. Where Fellini had a Ulysses-like character (Mastroianni) representing himself and his awe at the confusing life of a cynical old city on the verge of modern materialism, Altman does not have an himself watching and connecting the stories but tries to be more objective, more detached, letting the individual stories develop kind of casually. This is because the script does not come from him, from his own experiences ( as I understand the aging singer character is his only contribution to the plot) but from a number of short stories written by someone else. So, where Fellini is telling us of his own fears, surprises and expectations Altman is recounting someone's else story, a story that he is trying to tell not interpret, hoping that it will speak to the viewers by itself. So, if Fellini's fresco reminds me of The Triumph of Death in the cemetery of Pisa, scary, bigger than life and never to be forgotten, Altman's work reminds me of those many , beautiful murals one can see all over the world: busy, colorful, confusing and devoid of perspective but which one goes away from with a bit of bitter aftertaste for not having told a more decisive, clear message. An 8 nonetheless.
I looked at the some of the other reviews to see if someone else had my same hunch and did not find any reference to what I think is Altman's inspiration for this canvas of American lives: Federico Fellini. Where La Dolce vita was a large fresco of a certain society at a certain point in time, here Altman wants to represent on a large, spread out mural a number of characters loosely connected or separated by their own materialism, hoping that, in the end, what the viewer sees is the colors and shape of a bustling city that can only be L.A. Where Fellini had a Ulysses-like character (Mastroianni) representing himself and his awe at the confusing life of a cynical old city on the verge of modern materialism, Altman does not have an himself watching and connecting the stories but tries to be more objective, more detached, letting the individual stories develop kind of casually. This is because the script does not come from him, from his own experiences ( as I understand the aging singer character is his only contribution to the plot) but from a number of short stories written by someone else. So, where Fellini is telling us of his own fears, surprises and expectations Altman is recounting someone's else story, a story that he is trying to tell not interpret, hoping that it will speak to the viewers by itself. So, if Fellini's fresco reminds me of The Triumph of Death in the cemetery of Pisa, scary, bigger than life and never to be forgotten, Altman's work reminds me of those many , beautiful murals one can see all over the world: busy, colorful, confusing and devoid of perspective but which one goes away from with a bit of bitter aftertaste for not having told a more decisive, clear message. An 8 nonetheless.