We were out with new colleagues looking for a movie to go to after dinner. Our search took us from Wisconsin into Illinois, where "Article 99" appeared to be the most promising offering in a mall multiplex in the Waukegan area. The film was stunningly unmoving, unaffecting, unmemorable--the night such a complete waste that I simply had to bring back the title to confirm a long repressed memory (it was only the recollection of Kiefer Sutherland's credit that produced the title).
There are a lot of possibilities with a film like this, which apparently attempts to be "socially relevant" humor or, as other reviewers have put it, a film with an important message. I don't buy the notion that great art--Shakespeare's plays or Faulkner's fiction--succeeds because of any "message," and the same pretty much goes for mere "entertainment." But whether realizing Welles' description of film as a "ribbon of dreams" or Godard's as "truth 24 frames per second," a film can make us participants in its storyline, situations, and conflicts while fulfilling the most important goal of art--i.e. to present an imitation of life that reveals us to ourselves-- and even imparting a sort of "message" (though I prefer Joycean "epiphany"), but we hear too many messages. The purpose of art is to make them unnecessary by giving us the "knowledge" to see for, and about, ourselves. "Article 99" succeeded in none of the foregoing areas. A film with as noteworthy a similar precedent as "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" simply left us numb, indifferent and apathetic, quickly flying out our memories.
If a lesson is to be learned from viewing a movie such as this (and it's important to watch bad movies to know what a good movie is, or bad Altman films to know what a good Altman film is), it's that the setting matters little if the director's vision and approach or the screenplay's storyline doesn't "make" it matter. And in this film--apparently intent upon exposing the futility of practices occurring in a V.A. hospital--setting is everything. But the setting is cramped, collapsed, squeezed so tightly by an over-burdened script implemented by unimaginative, propaganda-grade direction that neither the audience nor the actors have any space to breathe in let alone become involved with the actions of the story.
Contrast this over-controlled environment, this anal, sterile, feeble imitation of life in a V.A. hospital with Robert Altman's "controlled extemporaneousness," or imaginative vision, that gave us a completely open, vibrant and real, alternately funny, sad, and awe-inspiring, complex and unforgettable movie about a place that is also the title of the film--"Nashville." Not only are we taken on an unforgettable journey through a diverse city but we come to know and empathize with no fewer than 24 characters who are working out their destinies in the city that even now serves as a microcosm of American mass popular culture, representing all those seeking fame and fortune, celebrity and success. Ultimately, perhaps because in every viewer there's a hidden desire to be significant, to be "star" (if only in the eyes of his or her creator), we learn something about ourselves, emerging sadder but wiser for the experience. At such a moment, you also begin to see why some of us would rather read Shakespeare than Stephen King (or, after seeing "Nashville," have no patience with an Altman "dud" like "Ready to Wear," a satire of the fashion world that by the mere choice of subject is inextricably weighed down by the director's failure of vision).
There are a lot of possibilities with a film like this, which apparently attempts to be "socially relevant" humor or, as other reviewers have put it, a film with an important message. I don't buy the notion that great art--Shakespeare's plays or Faulkner's fiction--succeeds because of any "message," and the same pretty much goes for mere "entertainment." But whether realizing Welles' description of film as a "ribbon of dreams" or Godard's as "truth 24 frames per second," a film can make us participants in its storyline, situations, and conflicts while fulfilling the most important goal of art--i.e. to present an imitation of life that reveals us to ourselves-- and even imparting a sort of "message" (though I prefer Joycean "epiphany"), but we hear too many messages. The purpose of art is to make them unnecessary by giving us the "knowledge" to see for, and about, ourselves. "Article 99" succeeded in none of the foregoing areas. A film with as noteworthy a similar precedent as "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" simply left us numb, indifferent and apathetic, quickly flying out our memories.
If a lesson is to be learned from viewing a movie such as this (and it's important to watch bad movies to know what a good movie is, or bad Altman films to know what a good Altman film is), it's that the setting matters little if the director's vision and approach or the screenplay's storyline doesn't "make" it matter. And in this film--apparently intent upon exposing the futility of practices occurring in a V.A. hospital--setting is everything. But the setting is cramped, collapsed, squeezed so tightly by an over-burdened script implemented by unimaginative, propaganda-grade direction that neither the audience nor the actors have any space to breathe in let alone become involved with the actions of the story.
Contrast this over-controlled environment, this anal, sterile, feeble imitation of life in a V.A. hospital with Robert Altman's "controlled extemporaneousness," or imaginative vision, that gave us a completely open, vibrant and real, alternately funny, sad, and awe-inspiring, complex and unforgettable movie about a place that is also the title of the film--"Nashville." Not only are we taken on an unforgettable journey through a diverse city but we come to know and empathize with no fewer than 24 characters who are working out their destinies in the city that even now serves as a microcosm of American mass popular culture, representing all those seeking fame and fortune, celebrity and success. Ultimately, perhaps because in every viewer there's a hidden desire to be significant, to be "star" (if only in the eyes of his or her creator), we learn something about ourselves, emerging sadder but wiser for the experience. At such a moment, you also begin to see why some of us would rather read Shakespeare than Stephen King (or, after seeing "Nashville," have no patience with an Altman "dud" like "Ready to Wear," a satire of the fashion world that by the mere choice of subject is inextricably weighed down by the director's failure of vision).