For reasons that are too boring to disclose, I am currently studying the Western genre. Having read about the homestead, the savage, the puritan, the Stetson and Mr. Wayne for several tedious weeks, I went looking for something that would utilise and then dispose of all these generic elements. I thought this film was not only visually stunning but also extremely sad. There's no hero in this piece (and if Beatty's character is supposed to be this, then he's just a rather inept man with a gastric problem) and there's no 'civilising' woman either. Furthermore, the requisite, archetypal whore is, in fact, an astute businesswoman. I agree with Roger Ebert's summation of the central relationship as a business partnership and not a romance (hence the titular '&' and not 'and') but this doesn't prevent the film from being saturated with a longing for authentic feeling. Well before the conclusion we know that this need will never be fulfilled as Altman consistently places his characters within an unrelentingly harsh, dirty landscape . In Altman's portrait of frontier life, it's every man for himself but this has nothing to do with the strong individual of Western myth and everything to do with melancholy and loneliness played out to the sounds of Leonard Cohen.
No comments:
Post a Comment