REGIONAL AMERICAN COMMUNITIES

A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Altman has never ceased to examine the United States through the lens of his homeland, primarily the southern states and California. The Tennessee of Nashville (1975), Kansas City (1996), and the Mississippi of Cookie's Fortune are places where Afro-Americans, whites and ordinary citizens struggle with sincerity. Though Altman films them with tenderness, he is much harsher and sardonic about California, which he portrays as a state of aggregated, fake communities par excellence. Everyone comes to live there. No one really talks to each other, not the hippies or the rich blondes in The Long Goodbye (1973), nor the spa clients in 3 Women (1977), nor the totally fractured human groups in the aptly named Short Cuts (1993). Altman also treats the collectives formed by hierarchical social classes with scathing wit, to the point of ridiculousness in the England of Gosford Park (2001).

PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITIES

Altman scoffs at official professional groups, such as the Army in M*A*S*H (1970) at the height of the Vietnam War or the entertainment industry of Hollywood movieland in The Player (1992) or the grotesque circus of Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (1976). On the other hand, he gives credit to outlaw professional groups, like the gangsters of the Great Depression in Thieves Like Us (1974) or the pro gamblers in “cowboy America” featured in McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971).

MUSICAL COMMUNITIES

Sound is of paramount importance in Altman's communal cinema. The characters’ discourses overlap, often getting drowned out by the group of people who don't really listen to each other. When it comes to music, however, everything becomes sacred, because the music chosen by Altman is always that of the people, this time as unified groups for the country-folk of Nashville, or the blues-tinged jazz of Kansas City. But since Altman knows that human nature is imperfect, he counters this musical community, which might seem strangely ideal, with another, far more nefarious human collective, those in politics. In short, Altman's cinema of social communities is strangely interconnected and fascinating to unravel.

Gosford Park, 2001 © USA Films - Medusa - Capitol Films / DR