Director: Robert Altman
Year Released: 1977
Rating: 2.0
1972's Images felt like a Bergman clone, and so does this 1977 effort by director Altman - straight from Persona, in fact, complete with a fractured dream sequence and personality swapping. However, no matter how talented Altman is, this is just shoddy screenwriting, lazily stuffing empty Jungian symbolism and metaphorical artwork (of hideous demon-women) into the hugely disappointing story of three characters who, for no logical or substantial reason, morph into other people (Sissy Spacek becomes a little girl; Shelley Duvall transforms into her mother and a painter). Their "shift" might have been acceptable had events that took place earlier in the picture foreshadowed or suggested any such association, but they do not; some find a sort-of feminist statement in there regarding the 'elimination of men' that does not follow any particular reasoning of its own. Altman provides an American form of Bergman some people find easier to taste; I prefer the original, thanks all the same.
