If a movie happens to have a lot of characters and it's hard work telling them apart, we call it a bad movie. If there's a large cast and every character stands out like the Statue of Liberty on a sunny day while contributing to the greater narrative good like Ovid, Shakespeare and Hemingway jamming after hours on a bookstore's shelves then the operative term is "Altmanesque." Robert Altman has just made his umpteeth Altmanesque ensemble piece, "Cookie's Fortune" (out April 7), starring a prodigious passel of heavenly thespians, including Glenn Close, Julianne Moore, Charles Dutton, Patricia Neal, Liv Tyler, Chris O'Donnell and Ned Beatty. And Donald Moffat, Courtney Vance, Lyle Lovett and Matt Malloy. And Rufus Thomas and Ruby Wilson. Those names don't mean much to you? Never mind the characters they play will. Good Friday leads to a not-so-good Saturday and a hell of a Sunday in Holly Springs, Mississippi, an antebellum cotton town bedecked with so many historical and preservationist plaques that the liquor store proudly displays a brass plate proclaiming: "On this site in 1897 nothing happened." Moviegoers more drawn to action than acting might think nothing much is happening in "Cookie's Fortune" either but they'd be mistaken. Nothing about "Cookie" jars, and yet it feels fresh and downright feisty in its baroque Southern evocation of small town life. Camille Dixon (Close) is directing Oscar Wilde's "Salome" at the local church, starring her IQ-challenged sister Cora (Moore), estranged mother to Emma (Tyler), who has recently breezed back into town. Big-hearted handyman and Wild Turkey aficionado Willis Richland (Dutton) does some errands for Cookie (Neal), a pipe-smoking old broad who misses her late husband so much she decides to shuffle off her mortal coil and speed up the process of joining him. When somebody rearranges the suicide to look like murder, Willis is arrested. But security down at the jail is lax because the local lawmen don't for one second believe Willis is guilty. After all, they've been fishing with him, and this is a locality where passing the time dangling a line in the river with a fellow gives you as foolproof a read on his actions as city folk are likely to get from a snippet of DNA. Quirky doesn't begin to describe the behavior to follow. Upon reading two short stories by Anne Rapp and pronouncing them "remarkable," Altman put the writer under exclusive contract. "We're going on our third year in this arrangement," Altman explained in mid-March during a visit to Paris. "She's not really experienced in screenwriting and I think that's why her work is so fresh." This strange gallery of characters is "pretty much the raison d'être for the film," says Altman. "I'm trying to show a culture and an area we're familiar with, and have preconceived notions about, but that can be a surprise to the audience. "The comedy and humor comes from the truthfulness of the behavior. It's just a little off-center. We've had films before set in the South where a black man is falsely accused. I wanted to bring familiar themes in and turn them on their side a bit. "Women have all the power in this story. And I would rather that women have all the power because I think they're more reasonable." When asked if it's better to have power or to go fishing, Altman doesn't hesitate: "It's much better for your heart and your life to go fishing. Having power means you have to work all the time." And does Altman fish? "Oh, yeah. All my life. And if you fish with somebody, you know who they are." The invisible flag in many a film buff's head has been flying at half mast since Stanley Kubrick's death March 7 at age 70. Altman's views on his uncompromising contemporary? "I think he was a great film artist of our time. A fiercely individual director who controlled his visions without compromise. I don't know anyone else who operated the way he did. I don't think we'll see another Stanley Kubrick. A lot of his films will endure for a long, long time." In the time between Kubrick's last two films, "Full Metal Jacket" and "Eyes Wide Shut," Altman made nine, including the excellent "Vincent and Theo," "The Player," "Short Cuts" and now "Cookie's Fortune." If the gods of fairness are on the audience's side, both Altman and his work will endure for a long, long time. |
