Please read this after you've seen the movie.
I think its an incredible film. You won't have seen another movie like it. I can't stop thinking about it. If Truffaut were alive, he'd remind us that if the ending seems inconsistent to us, it might mean there's an underlying rhythm in the movie we've missed, or perhaps we're not thinking outside the square.
(spoilers ahead - if you haven't seen film, don't read)
It seems that we are lead to believe in the inherent good of Dr T, and that he's wasting his efforts bestowing it on a bunch of loony ungrateful women. If this were just a narrative movie without anything to say at all, i think Dr T would have just had a happy ending with Helen Hunt's character. I was quite shocked when he didn't. This further twist seems to reinforce a message that no woman can be trusted by a good man. And the minute a man gets close to understanding and appreciating women (if anyone had the opportunity to do this, it was Dr T), he is either repulsed or rejected by them. The Freudian-sounding complex that Dr T's wife contracts came about (in the world of the film, which is a bit like Fellini's City of Women) because she was too appreciated, too understood, too loved by Dr T! The minute he finds a woman who appeals to him for her seeming lack of femanine qualities (Helen Hunt exists in a man's world. She is selfless around men, she walks naked in front of Dr T, and it is she who initiates the sexual encounter) - she disappoints him.
The movie often makes light of women's troubles: everything from accusing women of seeing a gynacologist for sexual gratification, to lousy, jealous bickering.
I was amazed that the original script was written by a woman. But then again, with Robert Altman films this usually doesn't dictate the final product, which is born of improvisation and collaboration with actors on set. The final product they have produced in this case is quite a cynical, dark, misogynistic film. The furthest thing from a comedy. And this is mainly given by the ending. The ending feels like the place where Altman really took over and thought of a way to wrap things up. It seems as if improvisation and collaboration produced the movie up until the wedding scene - and only at the end did they decide how it would end. Only once they'd grown so irritated by all the female characters they'd created!
Yet witnessing a live birth on screen is absolutely astonishing - and this is optimistic, reminding us of the miracle of birth. But, once again, the final scene in Mexico seems only to serve as a prelude to Dr T's line: "Its a boy." The entire end sequence is a genocide of women enacted. At the wedding, while the storm is going, Dr T strikes up a big grin: suddenly, he seems to see something, have some epiphany. Why is he laughing? Its not anything obvious to us - what should be funny about this chaotic situation? The answer perhaps is given by what happens next, the ending. Dr T has just witnessed his daughter effectively marry another woman (they kiss at the alter and run down the aisle together, acting out a mock-wedding), symbolising women all running off together and keeping themselves entertained. At this point Dr T strikes up his grin, and gets in the wedding car ALONE (representing MAN). Still clinging to some last vestige of marriage, he goes to see Helen Hunt, and the final woman of the film, the blokiest woman, is still, after all, a woman - she lets him down. At this point, Dr T drives off towards a mythical scene, rather more like The Wizard of Oz than anything we've been prepared for in this movie. He is swept up in a hurricane and lands the next morning in Mexico, like the opening of The Tempest, and the closing of Shakespeare in Love. We expect him to say, "What land is this?" as he is discovered in what appears to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and indeed represents one. What has figuratively happened is Dr T has left all the women he has known behind, to be ravaged by the hurricane, or what you will. The filmmakers have literally wiped out every female character we have come to know, and we are left with Dr T, presumably free of the City of Women. Then he is led by some mexican children, who discover him and his number plate which tells them he's a doctor, to a hut where a woman is in labour. He takes off his wedding ring, delivers the child and declares with a resounding laugh: "Its a boy! Its a boy!" We realise what Dr T was laughing about at the wedding. He's realised that men are better off without women. His friends were right all along.
Perhaps not an entirely pleasant or regular ending, but after reading my analysis, i think it makes a whole lot more sense in the world of the movie, where women are, on the whole, a nightmare. Tara Reid's character does not exactly fit into this framework. She seemed like quite a pleasant girl. But is this perhaps why her character seemed not to respect the sombre event of the assassination of JFK? Is this why the tone in her voice and the atmosphere of her grassy-knoll tour invited us to laugh at these events? To get us to dislike her?
I say it is an incredible film because i'll probably see it again, and because it was almost entirely refreshing and unexpected. I like Altman's style, which feels like free-jazz - a collection of elements which crescendo in the office scenes to a polyphony not usually seen in movies. This kind of chaos is impossible to script and make look unscripted. These moments are the gold in Altman's canon. Despite all its mysogynistic flavours, its quite an enjoyable movie - and you don't realise how negatively someone (who is the author of this work? when its collaboratively produced the term author is irrelevant - Altman is more like a conductor than an author) regarded these female characters till the ending. As the film progresses the portrait of each of them gets clearer and darker, in a moral sense. At the same time they are all still shallow characatures at the end of the movie. The only character we really get to know is Dr T. Perhaps this is because someone knew from the beginning he would be the only one to survive the hurricane.
I think its an incredible film. You won't have seen another movie like it. I can't stop thinking about it. If Truffaut were alive, he'd remind us that if the ending seems inconsistent to us, it might mean there's an underlying rhythm in the movie we've missed, or perhaps we're not thinking outside the square.
(spoilers ahead - if you haven't seen film, don't read)
It seems that we are lead to believe in the inherent good of Dr T, and that he's wasting his efforts bestowing it on a bunch of loony ungrateful women. If this were just a narrative movie without anything to say at all, i think Dr T would have just had a happy ending with Helen Hunt's character. I was quite shocked when he didn't. This further twist seems to reinforce a message that no woman can be trusted by a good man. And the minute a man gets close to understanding and appreciating women (if anyone had the opportunity to do this, it was Dr T), he is either repulsed or rejected by them. The Freudian-sounding complex that Dr T's wife contracts came about (in the world of the film, which is a bit like Fellini's City of Women) because she was too appreciated, too understood, too loved by Dr T! The minute he finds a woman who appeals to him for her seeming lack of femanine qualities (Helen Hunt exists in a man's world. She is selfless around men, she walks naked in front of Dr T, and it is she who initiates the sexual encounter) - she disappoints him.
The movie often makes light of women's troubles: everything from accusing women of seeing a gynacologist for sexual gratification, to lousy, jealous bickering.
I was amazed that the original script was written by a woman. But then again, with Robert Altman films this usually doesn't dictate the final product, which is born of improvisation and collaboration with actors on set. The final product they have produced in this case is quite a cynical, dark, misogynistic film. The furthest thing from a comedy. And this is mainly given by the ending. The ending feels like the place where Altman really took over and thought of a way to wrap things up. It seems as if improvisation and collaboration produced the movie up until the wedding scene - and only at the end did they decide how it would end. Only once they'd grown so irritated by all the female characters they'd created!
Yet witnessing a live birth on screen is absolutely astonishing - and this is optimistic, reminding us of the miracle of birth. But, once again, the final scene in Mexico seems only to serve as a prelude to Dr T's line: "Its a boy." The entire end sequence is a genocide of women enacted. At the wedding, while the storm is going, Dr T strikes up a big grin: suddenly, he seems to see something, have some epiphany. Why is he laughing? Its not anything obvious to us - what should be funny about this chaotic situation? The answer perhaps is given by what happens next, the ending. Dr T has just witnessed his daughter effectively marry another woman (they kiss at the alter and run down the aisle together, acting out a mock-wedding), symbolising women all running off together and keeping themselves entertained. At this point Dr T strikes up his grin, and gets in the wedding car ALONE (representing MAN). Still clinging to some last vestige of marriage, he goes to see Helen Hunt, and the final woman of the film, the blokiest woman, is still, after all, a woman - she lets him down. At this point, Dr T drives off towards a mythical scene, rather more like The Wizard of Oz than anything we've been prepared for in this movie. He is swept up in a hurricane and lands the next morning in Mexico, like the opening of The Tempest, and the closing of Shakespeare in Love. We expect him to say, "What land is this?" as he is discovered in what appears to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland, and indeed represents one. What has figuratively happened is Dr T has left all the women he has known behind, to be ravaged by the hurricane, or what you will. The filmmakers have literally wiped out every female character we have come to know, and we are left with Dr T, presumably free of the City of Women. Then he is led by some mexican children, who discover him and his number plate which tells them he's a doctor, to a hut where a woman is in labour. He takes off his wedding ring, delivers the child and declares with a resounding laugh: "Its a boy! Its a boy!" We realise what Dr T was laughing about at the wedding. He's realised that men are better off without women. His friends were right all along.
Perhaps not an entirely pleasant or regular ending, but after reading my analysis, i think it makes a whole lot more sense in the world of the movie, where women are, on the whole, a nightmare. Tara Reid's character does not exactly fit into this framework. She seemed like quite a pleasant girl. But is this perhaps why her character seemed not to respect the sombre event of the assassination of JFK? Is this why the tone in her voice and the atmosphere of her grassy-knoll tour invited us to laugh at these events? To get us to dislike her?
I say it is an incredible film because i'll probably see it again, and because it was almost entirely refreshing and unexpected. I like Altman's style, which feels like free-jazz - a collection of elements which crescendo in the office scenes to a polyphony not usually seen in movies. This kind of chaos is impossible to script and make look unscripted. These moments are the gold in Altman's canon. Despite all its mysogynistic flavours, its quite an enjoyable movie - and you don't realise how negatively someone (who is the author of this work? when its collaboratively produced the term author is irrelevant - Altman is more like a conductor than an author) regarded these female characters till the ending. As the film progresses the portrait of each of them gets clearer and darker, in a moral sense. At the same time they are all still shallow characatures at the end of the movie. The only character we really get to know is Dr T. Perhaps this is because someone knew from the beginning he would be the only one to survive the hurricane.