A Year Without Altman

“Nothing’s been quite right since Altman the Lion died.” That’s my paraphrase of Ellen Burstyn’s heartfelt speech in The Last Picture Show. Following Robert Altman’s death just over a year ago, American movies spiraled downward so noticeably that any sentient moviegoer must wonder whether there was a direct connection. A pall overshadowed 2007 cinema. Too often, I found myself scribbling a singular phrase in my reviewer’s notepad: I MISS ALTMAN.

With vehement pressure, those words creased the next notebook pages, especially at screenings of Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, I’m Not There, Margot at the Wedding and Juno—front-runners for worst films of the year. They represent cultural embarrassment, aesthetic failure and rot—a decline sadder than trash like Color Me Kubrick, Music & Lyrics and The Kingdom. Through directors Todd Haynes, Noah Baumbach and Jason Reitman, American movies’ potential collapsed into mediocrity, elitism, narcisscism and ineptitude.

As for Sidney Lumet’s film, it was especially dismaying since Lumet was one of the few American directors to attend the Altman memorial program at the Majestic Theater last January. Arthur Penn, Jim Jarmusch and Alan Rudolph were the only other New York-based directors who, along with Lumet, demonstrably respected the significance of Altman’s passing. However, Lumet’s newest film descended into fashionable indie nihilism, like an elder statesman desperately putting on Goth make-up just to seem hip. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead was one of the low points of indie-filmmaking, the movement of individual striving that Altman pioneered before it had a quotable Arts & Leisure tag.

Every significant development in contemporary American movies was anticipated—and defined—by Altman masterworks from the NASA space opera Countdown to his final show-business epic A Prairie Home Companion. He even showed how to make a big budget studio movie your own way with the still avant-garde Popeye. Having laid out the parameters of what original and independent filmmaking could be, it was disheartening to see so many directors in 2007 forget Altman’s example. And the ultimate disgrace seemed to come when the Independent Feature Project rushed into the annual, craven awards derby and, before the year was even over, announced that they had cooked-up a Best Ensemble Acting Award and slapped Altman’s name on it. They dirtied it further by giving the prize to the dubious ensemble of I’m Not There—not an example of life-like behavior and interaction or individual performer’s ingenuity like the  mix of real and fictional musicians in Altman’s 1975 Nashville (the movie of movies), but badly-cast tabloid-star names, all isolated from each other, involved in an egghead’s narcissistic circus. I’m glad I wasn’t there.

But having dutifully sat through most of the year’s releases, I saw a few Altman-worthy achievements, some halfway-there signs of ambition and yet far more too many films that worked toward killing the movie-going urge. A podcast of the New York Times’ two lead film critics discussing the movie year betrayed the duo chortling, “It was a good year to be evil Americans.” This attitude, so redolent of liberal media bias (the Borat scorn one hoped had played out) showed the prominence of the anti-Bush/anti-American depression that even Altman had expressed to the media yet never tarnished the rich understanding and broad compassion of his movies. The real villain in A Prairie Home Companion wasn’t corporate capitalism but Death.

Three of 2007’s best films dramatized similar wisdom: Eytan Fox’s The Bubble which used homophobia as a metaphor for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and homophilia as the best hope for its resolution; Fox entertwined militarism and soul like no film since Streamers. Alain Resnais’ Private Fears in Public Places, a graceful consideration of the sexual and spiritual tensions of modern urbanites; its diaphanous snowfall motif recalled McCabe & Mrs. Miller but only critic John Demetry recognized Resnais and Altman’s allusion to Joyce’s “The Dead.”

And, perhaps best of all, Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited, a family chronicle as class-specific as Cookie’s Fortune but whose distinct sensibility echoed Altman at his most vividly eccentric—The Long Goodbye, Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean and M*A*S*H.

Proof that critics forgot Altman’s contribution to human understanding and superb film craft was apparent in critics’ hostile revulsion to The Darjeeling Limited. They preferred the poisoned-family films by Lumet, Baumbach and Savages and Juno for sophomoric cleverness and cynicism. Recall the brothers in Vincent & Theo or Cookie’s Fortune’s sisters to see where Savages’ siblings ring false. Reflect upon the troubled teens of Kansas City and O.C. and Stiggs to realize Juno’s sickening contrivance. Altman’s artistry taught lucky filmgoers who enjoyed the range of his career to better understand themselves and their country.

What you might call Altman’s patriotism went deeper than politics—a fact some miss about M*A*S*H, Jimmy Dean, Fool for Love and Kansas City but that McCabe, Nashville and Short Cuts should have made inarguable.This year the argument was waged—unsuccessfully—by Paul Thomas Anderson’s woeful There Will Be Blood. Although an Altman acolyte, Anderson seems clueless about the things that made Altman the premiere filmmaker of his era. Anderson imitated Altman’s sense of the secretiveness in American loners, but his vision is trendily jaded. His characters leapt from bogus conceit to madness, rarely attaining recognizable humanity like Altman’s characters who always seem to be in the bus seat, car seat, party, family or crowded room with you. To mistake There Will Be Blood for a genuine American historical epic—after Altman!—is ridiculous. While Anderson graciously dedicated this monstrosity to his hero, it’s less than Altman—and we—deserve.

Altman’s passing was more meaningful than Antonioni or Bergman’s in 2007. They were also giants but Altman, their contemporary, remained a vital cultural force to the end. Sadly, his very American heart was crushingly misunderstood by some—a Times obit continued to misread the ending of the 1992 The Player, missing Altman’s ironic, mortified shudder at the triumph of Hollywood jackals, perhaps to convince Times readers that everything was hunky-dory. This is why Burstyn’s Last Picture Show lament is a fitting eulogy—for Altman and 2007 movies.