McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) – R. Altman

I was listening to Leonard Cohen’s debut album not too long ago and, naturally, it reminded me of this Robert Altman film that prominently uses three songs from that LP (“the stranger song”, “sisters of mercy”, and “winter lady”).  These songs lend a very melancholy feel to the film and surprisingly were added after the film was already written, even if their lyrics feel very apt.  The plot is pretty melancholy too – Altman called it an “anti-Western” but methinks it isn’t unlike other traditional Westerns that show changes as the wild frontier gave way to business interests. Perhaps the implied destruction of the American dream by unfeeling corporate monoliths (even if the small business focuses on booze and hookers here) is at odds with John Ford’s focus on community building (even if the community was sometimes racist). This description reminds me just how American the Western genre really is. But it’s true that Altman has put his own spin on things here, importing his muttered/overlapping dialogue into the sound design and working with cameraman Vilmos Zsigmond to “flash” the film before shooting (creating a hazy appearance that makes indoor scenes by candlelight/firelight warm and cozy). The camera also zooms and tracks, catching incidental action or drifting in and out of focus on gambler/businessman McCabe (Warren Beatty) and brothel manager/prostitute Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) who may or may not be developing a relationship before everything goes sour.  It’s not surprising that Christie escapes from this reality by smoking opium, lending even more haze to a picture that feels like an impressionistic (if possibly realistic) look at the past as prelude.

 

One Cut of the Dead (2017)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

One Cut of the Dead (2017) – S. Ueda

Not what I expected at all (and therefore so much better).  Described by SBS as “real zombies attack a film crew making a zombie movie” and it might be that for the first 30 minutes or so – but it isn’t only that or even really that.  I can’t write the review without explaining what happens after the first 30 minutes so stop here, if you’d like to be surprised like I was.  That said, the Japanese title (Kamera o tomeru na! or Don’t Stop Shooting!) pretty much gives things away.  The “real” plot involves a middling director (Takayuki Hamatsu) hired to film a zombie movie live in one take for a broadcast event – and the first 30 minutes is exactly that.  This “one cut” is indeed pretty thrilling but also rather odd with strange longueurs and unexpected dialogues, entrances, and exits.  When the characters run, they really run and the hand-held camera bounces along behind them.  Of course, watching this at first, you don’t really understand the technical challenges required to make the film flow (and sometimes not flow).  Therefore, the subsequent hour of the film takes you through the making of the film – but the genius here (from what appears to be an actual film class/collective) is that this “making of” is also fictional, with the script delightfully “explaining” all the weirdness in the zombie film that we’ve already seen (and now see again from behind the scenes, still in “real time” but no longer one cut).  Only in the end credits do we get a glimpse the actual crew making the real one cut zombie film.  Given the extreme low budget (made for $25K but earned $25 million), this reminded me of Kore-Eda’s After Life (1998) where amateur players recreate dead people’s most cherished memories, also on a shoestring.  And just like that film, One Cut of the Dead has a lot of heart, endearing yourself to the ragtag crew and in this case its central family.  Well worth your time, whether you like zombies or not!  The zombies are incidental!