ALTMAN (Ron Mann). 95 minutes. Opens Friday (September 19). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: NNNN
Ron Mann’s documentary profile of revered Hollywood iconoclast Robert Altman takes an appropriately cockeyed approach to its subject.
Mann asked a number of the late director’s collaborators – among them Lily Tomlin, Michael Murphy, Julianne Moore and Bruce Willis – to define the term “Altmanesque” and then illustrates their answers with stories of his innovative filmmaking methods.
Thanks to archival interviews, Altman serves as the narrator of his own life story. He explains the technical choices and philosophy that resulted in his glorious widescreen movies, which overflow with rambunctious action and detail while telling carefully crafted stories.
Compressing a half-century career into an hour and a half means Mann has no time to linger on any given picture – and he favours representing a number of Altman’s films with their endings, so beware of spoilers. But this is a movie for people who already know the work.
It’s going to be harder to watch the scenes about Popeye – and Robin Williams’s brief appearance as a talking head – than it was when the film first screened at the Lightbox earlier this summer.
But somehow that feels true to Altman as well he was forever mixing highs and lows, and his best work is haunted by death. That’s life, after all.
