Brewster McCloud, the Robert Altman film people rarely talk about, owes something to early Soviet pioneers like Eisenstein, but possibly a lot more to the ingestion of cannabinoids. It’s got experiment with form in mind, but it’s also sprawlingly formless, as if Altman was stoned while in the edit suite. We understand his point, but he will keep on making it.
In high (take that any way you want) Altman style, it’s a scenes-from-a-montage affair, a collage of moments where Altman in effect says “This!… this!… this!… this!… and this!… are what it’s all about”.
A snapshot of one world, then a snapshot of another, a movie reference, then a star from an old movie, then a bit of plot, then a bit more plot about something else, and repeat.
Tying it all together is the figure of Brewster McCloud, an earnest young man played earnestly by Bud Cort (about 22 but looking about 17), who is living illegally in the newly constructed Houston Astrodome – “the eighth wonder of the world” according to a guide (Shelley Duvall) who leads tours through it – and who is constructing a flying machine from feathers and bits of old Meccano in an attempt to get high himself. Dream big etc? This is our hero? Well he is irresistible to women, with three of them (played by Duvall, Sally Kellerman, Altman’s Mash star, and Jennifer Salt) all throwing themselves at him at various points for no obvious reason.
Altman starts the film twice. First time around the MGM lion does not roar, then we hear a snatch of a man (Rene Auberjonois) talking. Then the man, a scatty professor, arrives on screen to tell us something about the behaviour of birds, about pecking orders and mating habits. Then Altman starts it again and goes straight into a scene where a character played by Margaret Hamilton, the witch in The Wizard of Oz, is mangling The Star Spangled Banner in a rehearsal at the Astrodome. In case we don’t understand it is Margaret Hamilton, Altman later includes a shot of her doing the gardening in a pair of ruby slippers.
Then he introduces “San Francisco supercop Frank Shaft”, played by Michael Murphy, who’s meant to look a bit like Steve McQueen – turtleneck sweaters, shoulder holster, superstar loose-limbed gait and blue blue eyes – newly arrived in town to solve a series of murders.
Altman cycles the actions through the murder investigation of Shaft, returns to McCloud, then to the bird professor, then to the women who want a piece of Brewster, then to other cops on the case, then to the latest victim of a serial killer who is very discriminating in the choice of victims – if you’re counterculturally beyond the pail, you’re a candidate. To add emphasis, Altman signifies those for whom the bell is about to toll by having one of any number of squawking birds, present throughout as if on loan from Hitchcock, shit in their eye.
It is as subtle as a bird unloading into your face as well, though the technique is exquisite, particularly the overlapping sound design, which Altman had already perfected in Mash but really goes to town on here.
If Nashville is Altman’s political state of the nation movie, Brewster McCloud is a more psychological version of the same. How do Americans think? What drives them? How many of them want to fly? The answers: they think in terms of pecking orders; they want to be movie stars; not many want to fly.
The men in this who are not dweebs with lofty ambitions are generally dicks, idiots, phoneys or windbags. Even Frank Shaft. His car runs off the road at one point and one of his contact lenses gets dislodged, revealling Shaft (the movie of the same name wouldn’t arrive for another year) really has brown eyes.
The women fare better, though they all tend to the kooky, with Duvall (in her first film) the kookiest of the lot, a pretender to the crown then held by Goldie Hawn.
Altman has apparently been watching Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg or possibly its sequel The Young Girls of Rochefort, and leans heavily on the mulitcoloured pastel look. There is a funeral scene at one point and it’s tricked out beautifully with yellows and pinks, purples and oranges – you can date this film with a Pantone chart.
By the end tragedy has befallen Brewster McCloud. His wings have been clipped by a world that hasn’t given him space to soar. Or, alternative reading, he has dared to dream and, like Icarus, been ejected from the realm of the gods.
In case this is all too dispiriting, Altman then does a curtain call presenting his stars as if they were all a part of some massive touring circus. As, in fact, they have been. Pass the rolling papers.
Brewster McCloud – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
