America Today: 30th Anniversary of Robert Altman’s The Golden Lion

Released in theaters on October 1, 1993, based on the stories of Raymond Carver and awarded the Golden Lion at Venice, America Now is another outstanding choral fresco that ranks among Robert Altman’s masterpieces.

Carver built his stories from minor incidents. His characters were by no means ordinary people, and even mundane events could acquire important emotional significance. And then the stories were so unstructured that no one automatically said, “Oh, let’s make a movie out of this.”

In the darkness of Los Angeles at night, a swarm of helicopters takes off to spread an insecticidal agent against a fruit pest across the city: an attempt to eradicate the kind of “biblical plague” that has plagued America in modern times. Three hours later, another disaster suddenly strikes the American metropolis: an earthquake that interrupts the characters’ lives for a fateful few seconds, only for life to resume exactly as before. “I am sure that every earthquake is associated with a dramatic event in someone’s life.“, he will comment on this issue Robert Altmanfor which a seismic shock serves as the end a majestic tragicomic mural of modern Americabased on nine stories by Raymond Carver and a poem by the American writer, Lemonade.

Robert Altman’s Revenge

October 1, 1993 America Today, original title. Short options (translated as “shortcuts” but also “fragments”) makes its theatrical debut in the US and Italy, less than a month after its triumphant presentation at the Venice Film Festival. For Robert Altman, then sixty-eight years old, it was the culmination of a project that has been in the works for some time and was not without production difficultiesand which marks his final redemption after more than a decade on the fringes of the Hollywood industry. After a weird Disney blockbuster Popeye

1980 is by far the most atypical product in his filmography, Altman actually devoted himself to films made on a small budget and intended for independent distribution; often with excellent results from an artistic point of view(Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Streamers), but remained limited to an audience of festivals and arthouses.

After a curious TV bracket Tanner ’88 and European co-production Vincent and Theo, 1992 saw Robert Altman’s unexpected return to the spotlight with his first success since the New Hollywood days: Title Characters, a corrosive satire of the entertainment world that suddenly catapulted him back into fashion and earned him numerous awards. from Cannes to the USA. Thanks to excellent reviews Main charactersThe Kansas City director begins filming a script he co-wrote with Frank Barhydt. taking inspiration from the stories of Raymond Carverhaving the opportunity to count on the participation of about twenty famous actors: already established stars (Matthew Modine, Tim Robbins, Robert Downey Jr., Frances McDormand, Andie MacDowell, Madeleine Stowe, Jennifer Jason Leigh), rising talents such as Julianne Moorefamous faces (not just in movies) such as Lily Tomlin and Tom Waits and even a legend of that caliber, Jack Lemmon.

Robert Altman: From America Today to Nashville: 10 Masterpieces by an Unforgettable Director

Altman’s America yesterday, today and tomorrow

Characterized by a broad choral structure reminiscent of the structure of Altman’s previous classical works.starting from immortal Nashville, America today received a rapturous reception at the 1993 Venice Film Festival, winning Golden Lion for Best Film (ex aequo Three colors – blue film Krzysztof Kieślowski) and a special Volpi Cup for the cast, and Robert Altman would receive another Oscar nomination for directing just one year after being nominated for the film Main characters. Plebiscite confirming immediate inclusion of modern America in the canon of Altman’s masterpiecesthanks also to the ability to re-adapt a literary source to the poetics of the director: a clear observation of humanity captured in everyday life, emphasizing its ambitions, fragility and suffering, with a naturalness capable of freeing the work from any rhetorical or moralistic temptation and, at the same time, liberating it from the specific context of suburban Los Angeles.

Because while Los Angeles serves as the setting for the intertwining events of more than twenty supporting actors, The minimalist nature of Carver’s stories allows the film to achieve perfect universality.emphasized in an antiphrastic manner by the Italian name: Quando Nashville turned the capital of Tennessee into a synecdoche for the United States of the seventies, while remaining tied to the imagery of country music and the description of this specific sociocultural microcosm, the people America today

they belong “here and elsewhere,” which may refer to the West of yesterday and the present. In short, the timeless “today” that allows Altman to explore the contradictions, petty pettinesses and restrained neuroses of his characters, with a disappointment that nevertheless refuses to degenerate into sweeping cynicism, instead leaving some glimmer of sparks of genuine empathy; as in the final meeting between the Finnigans (Bruce Davison and Andie MacDowell) and pastry chef Andy Bitcover (Lyle Lovett), taken from Small but good thing.

Nashville, Robert Altman’s masterpiece that changed film history

Waiting for an earthquake

There’s obviously still some hypocrisy in the director’s target that spreads like cracks in the film’s idyllic structure.American way of life: Symbolized by Tim Robbins’ Jean Shepard, with his ambitions as an authoritarian family man, jealous of his wife Sherry (Madeleine Stowe) but also possessive of his lover Betty Weathers (Frances McDormand), who doesn’t hesitate to abuse cop roles to satisfy his conquest ambitions . What follows is a bourgeois family drama, with an almost Bergmanian flavor, in the confrontation-confession between Ralph Wyman (Matthew Modine) and his wife Marian (Julianne Moore), as well as a much more ironic drama centered on Jerry’s silent disappointment. Kaiser (Chris Penn), who listens to his wife Lois (Jennifer Jason Leigh) while she works on an erotic line in the midst of routine household chores; only in his case the buffoonish idea suddenly turns into tragedy.

In this motley tapestry of interconnected lives, the influence of which would extend to several future directors (an example would be Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, the most Altman-esque film of Altman’s greatest “disciple”), it is ironic that the most recurring element is the lack of communication, being unable to fully perceive feelings others and the suffering of others. This happens to Jack Lemmon’s self-absorbed grandfather Paul, nightclub singer Tess Trainer (Annie Ross), her daughter Zoe (Lori Singer) and three fishermen who decide to dump the girl’s corpse. And this happens even after an earthquake:”If you’re from California, this is common.“, two couples comment lazily, turning away from the news to pour themselves a tequila. The death of a man is just a side note, another It doesn’t bother me a society too distracted to worry about the apocalypse.