Over the course of a few hectic days, numerous interrelated people prepare for a political convention as secrets and lies are surfaced and revealed.
Director: Robert Altman
Stars: Keith Carradine, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Ned Beatty, Geraldine Chaplin, Shelley Duvall, Henry Gibson, Scott Glenn, Barbara Harris, Michael Murphy, Lily Tomlin, Keenan Wynn.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073440/
Watched online, good print.
~27 songs in the Soundtracks.
IMDb rating 7.8 with 20k+ votes. I can't find a reason to praise this. Of course, I don't like country music, so that puts this at a deficit before the first frame.
If watching film is voyeurism, then this film elevates it to spycraft. This is like being an NSA agent who has to listen to every inane conversation on a wiretap. We witness lots of irrelevant scenes, and don't know the outcome of the climax of the film. Nor did I pick up on why the shooter chose that victim; he was shown watching her intensely more than once.
We never see so much as a photo of the 3rd party candidate whose campaign truck fills the air with populist poison, claiming, for instance, that Congress shouldn't be made of up lawyers (who else should write the laws?). No campaign has run without images of the candidates (I suspect) ever in this country.
I've never watched this film before, and wish I hadn't today. It took a lot of grit to get through it, because it's too long and I fell asleep, so I had to rewatch some of it to find my place. Only Lily Tomlin inspired me to want to learn more about her character. I got enough during the film.
Well, now I've seen what all the fuss was about. The overlapping dialog was different, but not better than an orderly script. Realism isn't necessarily the best form of art.
ABC, Paramount, dir. Altman; 5
