The phrase of the day by June Gudmundsdottir alias Greta Scacchi from another Altman movie, The Player (watch it, 10/10) is the following (the question asked by Griffin Mill, a screen writing executive in trouble... (Tim Robbins)):
"Do you like books?"
"I like words and letters. But I'm not crazy about complete sentences."
Just think for a sec about how this answer describes Altman's storytelling. The Player isn't a network narrative (his classic, let's say prototype one definitely is – which comes one (1!) year later than this...), but the way how it smoothly interconnects all the paths and characters of the story (I'm thinking on the endless camera movements going in and out of rooms and separate spatial zones, plus the unique way of intercutting and overlapping the several parallel patterns of conversations) is already shows and advances how he will soon master the seemingly spreading storylines.
I've never been interested in these complicated narratives' compact and smooth solutions – usually the perfectly worked off loose ends sacrifice other qualities of the film. Makes from the well established and pronounced letters and words a simple, syntactically valid but semantically unimpressive sentence. (It would deserve another entry, but I mention only here Matteo Garrone's superhot Gomorra (2008), where the paths of the network narrative deliberately avoid to draw a coherent narrative picture (to fulfill its aim is to depict the maffia's lost hierarchical and organizational order, to narratively emphasize the ongoing chaos...)).
If you don't care about storytelling you might still be interested in embedded stories, more precise the always exciting exercises of a film-in-a-film plot. Almost like two days ago...
10/10
Posts
