Desperately Seeking Quintet Defender

On a freezing cold Saturday morning in 1979, Filmbrain and friend snuck in to see Robert Altman's Quintet. We knew nothing about the film, other than that it was science fiction. As complicated as it was to follow (not to mention mind-numbingly slow, especially for a pair of fourteen year-olds), we sat through the whole thing, convinced that a spaceship and/or giant alien would appear. No such luck. Of course, Filmbrain knew nothing of Tarkovsky at this time, so any nods to Stalker or Solaris were lost on him. Cut to six years later. Filmbrain at university, watching Quintet for a second time with a group of So. Cal. stoners who are convinced the film is a documentary from the future. Even in the midst of the mind-expanding university years, Quintet still felt intellectually fraudulent, and a half-baked idea at best. (Wasn't Altman doing a lot of drugs at that time?) Thanks to the Fox Movie Channel and a DVR, Filmbrain has had the opportunity to revisit the film as an adult -- yet even after 1.5 viewings in two days, the film still seems little more than pretentious drivel. However, Filmbrain has an overwhelming desire to be proven wrong. A brief overview for the uninitiated: It's the future, and it's cold. Damn cold. (Nuclear winter?) The human race is dying out, and the remaining survivors live in iced-over cities where wild dogs feast on the bodies of the dead that litter the streets. With nothing else to do, they fill their days and nights playing a game called Quintet (which consists of placing tschotkes on a five-sided table, and little else). Losing the game results in death, or so it seems. Enter Paul Newman, a seal hunter who returns to the city with his pregnant wife (Brigitte Fossey). A bad move on his part, for both his wife and brother are blown up moments after arriving. Hero Newman is determined to find out who did it, and for the next ninety minutes we get to watch him walk around looking utterly confused ("How did I wind up in this film?") and playing a game of Quintet or two until the film ends. Now, nobody loves a bit of nihilistic misanthropy more than Filmbrain, but this is really taking it a bit too far. Altman's portrait of humanity in its final throes is beyond bleak, and any message he means for us to glean is lost in the exaggerated misery. Take the shady character known as Saint Christopher (Vittorio Gassman) -- he delivers a sermon on the five stages of life, all of which just happen to be miserable -- it simply becomes laughable. Aggravating matters is Altman's decision to smear Vaseline around the edges of the lens -- the entire film looks like a vintage Penthouse spread. Was this to meant to give the film a more dreamlike look to it, or was it merely needed to make the remains of the 1967 Montreal Expo (where the entire film was shot) look more post-apocalyptic? That the film is full of references to various "fives" is hardly surprising, but again, is there some deeper meaning behind it all? The cast (which is made of up Bunuel, Bergman and DeSica regulars) look as if they are about to perform Shakespeare on Ice, and like Newman, wander through the film in an almost catatonic state, desperate to work out exactly what is going on. Scouring the net for reviews has yielded a fair amount of hostility towards the film, with more than one review claiming it to be "the worst film ever made". While it's far cry from that, it is an oddity in the Altman oeuvre, and a frustrating one at that. Coming between 1978's A Wedding and 1979's A Perfect Couple, Quintet is a film that Filmbrain wants to appreciate, but hasn't been able to (as of yet). Is this his riff on Tarkovsky? Bergman? Or is it just another Altman excess, like Popeye? Filmbrain throws it out to his readers -- can one (or more) of you enlighten him about the film? Is there a subtext that he's missing, or is it genuinely the mess it appears to be? Feel free to comment below and show Filmbrain the error of his ways.

Comments

[Aaron]

I've never seen it, but your reaction seems similar to mine after his recent The Company, and more than anything else, I'm just excited to read you calling anything potentially "pretentious drivel." (Heh.)

[Sal C.]

Alas, this was my first Altman experience - also back in college (I am convinced the professor showed the film because it was the cheapest 16mm rental she could get for that week). I doubt Altman-worshipper Armond White himself could find anything positive to say about this convoluted mess. In fact, I don't recall if Pauline Kael even reviewed the thing despite her love for almost all things Altman. Luckily a complete retro at A.M.M.I. 3 years later opened my eyes to his many remarkable films and he remains my favorite American film director to this day.

[Robert Hunt]

It's been a few years since I watched "Quintet" - and I will admit that it's an oddly dry film, but I've actually come to like it. You may recall that it was actually based on a boardgame that Altman invented - and it seems to me that without understanding the game they're playing, the film is near incomprehensible.(I've read the instructions to the game -they were in the press kit - and it's even harder to make sense out of than the film....) Aside from the game-like structure, the film has something of a Spaghetti Western-gone-astray quality, (- a stranger comes to town....) though not enough for Altman to really work with. The best criticism of the film I've read - and the most favorable - was a combined review with "Health" in 'Sight and Sound' back in '79 or '80.
I have to disagree with you on "Popeye", though, which, for all its flaws, is one of my favorites....

[Filmbrain]

Altman is one of my favorites as well -- which makes not liking the film that much harder on me.

As for Kael, though a huge Altman supporter, even she couldn't get behind Quintet. She had this to say about it:

"Altman has reached the point of wearing his failures like medals. He's creating a mystique of heroism out of emptied theaters."

And Robert, you misunderstand me about Popeye. I too love it, though there's no clearer example of Altman's excess. (The budget, the drug use, etc.)

[la_depressionada]

you know i remember thinking even at the wedding -- this guy who had so deftly tapped into something fundamental (and fleeting) about what was going on in american culture in the 1970s -- its deconstruction i think -- was no longer capturing its cadences so perfectly. (o that's a rotten sentence, but what he did rhythmically and why it was so exciting was more visceral and therefore hard to explain.)what was great was that he did it even in period pieces like m&mrs m -- o a "movie pairing" ha. that movie was so 70s.

even though i probably saw 90% of his films after a wedding it wasn't until tanner that i thought he once again captured that kind of timeliness he had in (particularly) the early 70s. 3 women represented a kind of zenith for that period i think.

[dvd]

This film sounds fascinating, a failure though it may be - but like A Wedding, it seems I'm destined not to see it unless I break down and get cable TV.

This Kael quote - "He's creating a mystique of heroism out of emptied theaters" - cracks me up. I was trying to describe my own inclination towards non-commercial filmmaking to someone earlier today, and this is precisely what I should have said.

[dvd]

Nice new banner, by the way. Historians will one day note this as signifying the onset of Filmbrain's moody period.

[Jordan Hoffman]

Pauline Kael wasn't always an Altman booster -- she trashed "Images" too.

My thoughts on quintet (from my blog):

Quintet (1979), Robert Altman, F
Insufferable. One of the worst films I've ever seen. I like slow movies. I even like the occasional movie where you have no idea what is going on. But I don't like slow movies where you don't know what's going on that look like shit! Last Year At Marienbad at least has gorgeous photography. Quintet is blurry. I'm not kidding. The whole film has an irised out-of-focus effect happening. I kept wiping my glasses! Another annoying thing is that when you read the blurb it sounds interesting -- at least interesting enough for an episode of "Star Trek." (The idea is, basically, a post-apocalyptic world where the surviving citzenry are so bored they play a board game with lethal stakes for entertainment.) It's basically Mad Max or Rollerball but with no intelligence or energy. Seriously, 24 minutes passed before anything resembling an introduction happened. I'm sure that there just wasn't enough footage to make this feature length so they had to use every shot they had. There're long takes of people walking walking walking, then speaking some pseudo-intellectual dialogue, then more walking. Altman must've been in the depths of drug addiction when he made this. I almost wish you do see this picture, just so you can see how bad it is. Paul Newman better've been paid well to besmirch his good name on this one.

[psytrance]

I like the film

[Aaron Hillis]

Well, something here worked because I now want to see this train wreck for myself.

[Peter Nellhaus]

I saw Quintet when it came out. I only remember that I felt it was a big miss on Altman's part.

I did want to thank you for letting me know about Spider Forest. I saw it on DVD. I have electricity, but no internet of my own, which is why my site hasn't been updated since Hurricane Wilma.

Speaking of disappointments, I saw Initial D and wondered how it was a big hit in Asia, and why Lau and Mak couldn't follow up the Infernal Affairs trilogy with something a little more substantial.

[la_depressionada]

hey babe that picture of new pic of ak is smokin'. so heroin chic.

[Donald Melanson]

I haven't seen it, but it sounds more than a little like THX-1138, right down to the use of exisiting, futuristic-looking locations. Can anyone who's seen both offer a better comparison?

[Eric Henderson]

I saw it with a seminarian friend of mine, and we both thought it was odd but interesting.

Here's City Pages' Matthew Wilder on the film:

http://www.citypages.com/databank/23/1122/article10461.asp

And here's what I wrote on the same trio Wilder wrote about (except for that I never did finish thoughts on the third one):

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ephender/18097.html

[pontster]

Saw this when I was 20 and still don't know why I found it fascinating...then managed to get these promotional materials off the theater manager that consisted of the rules for the game...no lie. It seems this film was released during the Big Backgammon craze of the late 1970s; therefore Quintet resembles backgammon, but instead of the bar there was neutral space--"limbo"--that, if occupied by one of your two active gamepieces, protected you from being killed. There was a frontgame and an endgame (consisting of the last of the five frontgame players and a "Sixth Man" who up to that point had acted as a trickster-adjudicator figure. Playing proceeded clockwise, with the order of play determined by the "Sixth Man". During the endgame, if double fives were rolled on the dice, a player would then achieve the "perfect kill" and would announce that feat by saying "Quintet".

This is all from memory--I've long since lost those promotional items. The only other thing I remember was hearing "Black Angel's Death Song" by the Velvets on the way to the movie and imagining the song had secret associational value vis a vis the movie (which simply wasn't there).

The game is OK--rather well designed. It's the movie that--especially upon rewatching--turns your brain to moldy Cheese Whiz (tm). Sorry, no defender here.

[John]

I too was one of those 14 year old kids back in 1979 who sneaked in to see this sci-fi flick. To be quite honest, I enjoyed the ambiance and the mystery of the movie. Furthermore, I grabbed a stack of the press kit handouts that provided instructions for the actual board game. This lead to my home made creation of the board game that was played with my teen friends. Somewhere in storage a few copies of that promo handout still exist and I will scan it someday when I come across it. Let me know if anyone is interested in a copy. My email is gradalis AT u.washington.edu.

[Adam Zanzie]

"Quintet" is an Altman masterpiece. An exerpt from the essay on the film posted at my own blog:

"The frozen wasteland which serves as the backdrop for 'Quintet' is like an all-you-can-eat dessert buffet for the eyes and the imagination. You cannot take your eyes off of it. This is a blindingly white, snowy tundra that stretches in two directions: in the South, there used to be seals to hunt, but no longer; and in the North, well... nobody knows what's up there. And in between are the last remaining people on Earth, stranded in their own hellish limbo, with nothing left to live for in life other than to enact the violence merely alluded to in what appears to be everyone's favorite board game. This is a survival of the fittest story, set in a futuristic ice age where there is nothing but ice and snow everywhere. In short, it's my kind of movie."

[dan]

I have watched Quintet maybe ten times, and I confess I find it visually transfixing. Don't bother with the story--"intellectually fraudulent" seems quite right, actually--rather, allow yourself to be enveloped by the hypnotic visuals. The multi-layered "sets" (not sets, mostly, as we all know; I was at Man and His World in 68 when I was 5 and even then I knew that a science fiction film had to be shot there), produce remarkably complex visual textures that genuinely beguile. Scott Bushnell's costumes are stunning, and Tom Pierson's score is fascinating. I will eventually complete my little Quintet page, but here it is it partial form: http://seedyroad.com/various/quintet.htm