Feature
You Ain't Seen Me, Right? – Brewster McCloud (1970)
Movie Feature
Daniel
27th May 2011
Fancy reading an informative piece of criticism on a little-known film, all under a patronising heading and book-ended by low-brow gags? Then look now further – You Ain’t Seen Me Right? is the feature for you.
You Ain't Seen Me, Right? is brought to you by Daniel Palmer, of Part-Time Infidel web fame. John Williams wrote a theme tune for Daniel and considers it his best work.
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The runaway success of MASH (1970) ended twenty years in the wilderness for Robert Altman; directing TV shows like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Bonanza and Kraft Mystery Theatre and low-budget features like Countdown (1968), regularly clashing with authority and leaving under a cloud of acrimony. By a stroke of luck and with impeccable timing, MASH coincided with the emergence of a generation of young filmmakers that shared Altman’s iconoclastic stance and viewed him as something of a guru. Altman came to be regarded as the godfather of this new vanguard; an erratic, wilfully individual figure who put creative fulfilment before mass appeal.
What MASH did for - or to - the war film, Brewster McCloud did for the police procedural; injecting it with a healthy dose of irreverence and making it impossible to view the genre in the same light again. Altman took great joy in dismantling its staid conventions and disregarding the disciplines drilled into him; turning its own techniques against it, taking prolonged chase sequences to ludicrous extremes, revelling in the crude stereotypes that pass for characterisation. Brewster McCloud features all the stylistic hallmarks for which Altman’s oeuvre is equally loved and loathed: overlapping sound, extreme long shots, multi-person set-ups, musical interludes; drawing attention to the conceit at every available opportunity, its immediacy and authenticity artful in its sparseness.
Brewster (Bud Cort) is a shy loner who lives in a fallout shelter in the bowels of the Houston Astrodome. With the help of his mysterious guide, Louise (Sally Kellerman), he constructs a pair of wings with which to fly around the stadium, achieving his lifelong ambition to overcome the limitations of his body. A number of murders bring Frank Shaft (Michael Murphy) to town; a hotshot San Francisco ‘super cop’ with piercing blues eyes and a fondness for turtle neck sweaters. Shaft’s unorthodox methods initially cause consternation amongst the reactionary Houston force, but his analysis of the bird droppings found on the victims sends them on the trail of the killer.
Before Harold and Maude (1971) made him a poster boy for silver screen psychosis, Cort brought his gauche energy to this equally unorthodox role, his unnerving calm perfectly articulating Brewster’s absorption in his quest. Kellerman’s willowy beauty shines through as Brewster’s ethereal protector, embodying with flawless poise a facet of human consciousness neglected by worldly concerns. There are no stars in an Altman film, merely participants who contribute to the whole - like Rene Auberjonois as the lecturer whose analysis of birds illustrates how their rituals and impulses are not that different from ours, John Schuck at his dim-witted best, Stacy Keach wearing grotesque make-up, Shelly Duvall in typically ditzy form, and Murphy doing his best Bullitt parody.
Altman was never one to talk down to his audience, crediting them with enough intelligence to make their own judgements, using farce and irony to explore big ideas and satirise social mores. Brewster’s motives are never fully explained - nor should they be, as any attempt to do so would be hopelessly contrived and negate his merciless deconstruction.
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