Volume 51, Number 3 · February 26, 2004
No Bloody Toe Shoes
By Joan Acocella
The Company
a film by Robert Altman, story by Neve Campbell and Barbara Turner, screenplay by Barbara Turner
Sometimes it seems as though Robert Altman makes every movie that comes into his mind. A picture about the health food industry? Jazz? Haute couture? Weddings? Sure, let's do it. And with the 'parachuting' method that he worked out almost thirty years ago in Nashville—whereby you drop down into a subculture, gather up a lot of piquant detail, mix actual members of that world with actors, weave together a few dozen narrative threads involving these people, and get out before your curiosity is exhausted—such films must seem to him easy to make. You don't have to develop characters; with so many, you don't have time. Nor do you really need a plot. Incident will suffice. Some of these movies, particularly those that have a bit of plot (Nashville, The Player, Gosford Park), turn out wonderfully, and others don't (H.E.A.L.T.H., A Wedding, Ready to Wear), but one gets the feeling that Altman doesn't mind much one way or the other. He's seventy-nine and famous. He gets stars to work for him for scale. He's on his third wife, his sixth child, his thirty-seventh movie. God bless him!
Review, 3426 words
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