McCabe & Mrs. Miller
I have a very patchy history with Robert Altman. I’ve seen a bit of the Player, and allegedly all of Gosford Park and A Prairie Home Companion. I don’t entirely remember either of those, but I’ve also not seen the stuff he’s most celebrated for, Nashville, MASH, The Long Goodbye, Short Cuts, and this.
I also haven’t seen a lot (possibly any) of Warren Beatty, who plays McCabe. He comes to a frontier mining town in 1902 with the intention of setting up a brothel and making money. He’s well-dressed, a confident gambler, comes with a reputation of having killed some guy. All the yokels in the bar are intimidated and impressed (including René Auberjonois, aka Odo). It’s a very well done introduction, because as soon as McCabe meets anyone who’s actually a serious person or who has half a brain, it becomes very clear that he’s actually a classic American dumbass, coasting on charisma from scheme to scheme. It should have been obvious when his cool murder nickname was “Pudgy”. He’s soon joined by Julie Christie as Mrs. Miller, a madam who actually knows how to run the business of the brothel, and they fall into a semi-romantic, semi-paid for relationship but actually see some success.
Having had success as a small businessman, we get into the evergreen story of a big fish coming down to eat up any source of independent wealth or success. A couple of Serious Guys from a big mining company come down and offer to buy him out. McCabe refuses, thinking he’s a negotiating genius, like Mr. Burns getting $100m for the power plant. These Serious Guys know who they’re dealing with - a dumbass - and basically sit him down and say if you do not sell to us, we will murder you. They’re not even that hateable, they are just the system, doing what the system does. McCabe listens to this, and then tries to back down on his price, but alas, it’s too late.
The movie kind of looks, on purpose, a bit grimy and unclear. It wouldn’t have been my choice, I paused once or twice to see if the streaming bitrate would catch up or anything. There were plenty of shots that were stunningly framed, and I think things cleared up significantly for the snow storm ending. The Serious Guys send in a couple of killers to take out McCabe and (apparently unplanned, just a happy coincidence during filming) a massive drop of snow falls down covering everyone up to their waist. McCabe, as a scrappy improviser, is arguably evenly matched during this and manages to take out the killers, only to freeze to death himself in the aftermath.
It’s impressive how relevant the whole thing is, except instead of buying the company to keep it running and make money, now we have private equity coming in to gut the company, fire everyone, make as much short term money as possible and walk away like the Joker from a burning hospital. They don’t even have to send in killers any more.