Der Gesundheits-Kongreß

Some of the acknowledged Altman "masterpieces" seem sadder to me now. Maybe it's me. Like the last reviewer, I even like this "lesser" Altman (shown recently on FMC), although I don't think he was aiming at a wide audience. Organization politics as a "microcosm" for public campaigns. Some of this satirical "docudrama" is now dated, like Dick Cavett watching the Tonight Show, but I found much of the dialog funny and insightful (e.g. "You are for real. That means you're no threat to anyone"). The story isn't "profound," but I liked it. And the performances are funny, especially Cavett (as "himself"), Lauren Bacall as an aging conservative figurehead, Glenda Jackson (who actually became a member of Parliament) as a left wing ideologue (in the opening scene lecturing someone dressed as a carrot on the sanctity of politics), and Carol Burnett as a basket case. All in the inimitable Altman style, although maybe not quite as inimitable as usual. But pretty inimitable.

I was mesmereized by this movie when it played on 1983 summer TV, but haven't been able to see it again, even though I've been searching off and on (mostly off) for 20+ years.

Apparently, no one else in the known universe has anything good to say about HEALTH. Perhaps I won't, either, on a second watching. But on that first watching it was one of the best, funniest, quirkiest movies I'd ever seen. I've actually been recommending it to some of my friends ever since.

Contrary to what one commenter noted, I did recently see a reference to it on VHS, but I was hoping to find it on DVD. I guess a director's commentary would be too much to ask for <g>.

As disjointed as it is, HEALTH is still light years more clever than a lot of movies that get wide release so it's a real head scratcher why it sat on the shelf for so long...and is pretty much forgotten now. Assembling his standard large cast, director Robert Altman makes some pointed comments on the hypocrisy of many health food aficionados. Lauren Bacall and Glenda Jackson are well-used as rivals vying for president of a national health organization. Bacall is the best thing in the movie as she claims to be in her eighties --- and has a dog in his forties to boot! She's also senile and kept alive by a sex-starved nurse and a shady manager. Jackson is the clipped tongue naturalist who views herself some sort of Jesus figure for the Health conscious set. Carol Burnett is terrific as a government representative who grows more and more wary of the health movement the more she is exposed to it. Her interview scene with Dick Cavett, as himself, is priceless. James Garner plays Bacall's manager and he's appropriately caddish. Henry Gibson is a hoot as a political dirty trickster. Paul Dooley and Alfre Woodard have a few funny moments as well.

When Altman made "Health" his career was sinking fast. Hollywood had discovered the summer special effects blockbuster and had no further need of 70's temperamental, erratic, auteurs like Altman or Bogdanovich or Cimino or Coppola. And considering that they were producing stuff like "One From the Heart", "Heaven's Gate", "Quintet", and "At Long Last Love" who can blame them.

The New York Times reviewer, maybe it was Judith Crist, was trying real, real hard to like this movie. She honestly acknowledged that she did not want Altman to go the way of Orson Welles or Erich von Stroheim and knew that his career could not survive more flops. Altman had made one flop after another since "Nashville" (then again his critically praised overlapping dialogue technique confused and alienated audiences so he had never been much of a moneymaker, just a critical darling. Now the critics were abandoning him.). The reviewer desperately wanted this film to be good enough to save Altman's career.

It wasn't anywhere close.

"HEALTH" never comes near the brilliance of Robert Altman's earlier political satire, "Nashville"; but it has its moments. I found it interesting because of the good characterizations from all of the participants, but bringing it all together into a unifying theme seems to be absent from this Altman effort. The movie starts out promising but seems to lose steam before its hour and 45 minute running time is over. The ending disappoints because the outcome is so obvious from the first few frames. Still the viewer can have fun along the way: Lauren Bacall lifting her hand for purity and then sometimes inexplicably dropping off into oblivion; Paul Dooley lying at the bottom of the swimming pool as a campaign stunt; Dick Cavett relaxing in his hotel room watching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Granted you would have to be a certain age to appreciate that last joke. Still, one wonders what was in Altman's mind in creating this film. Since it was made in 1980, I would think it would be a veiled criticism of Ronald Reagan's ascension to the presidency. But it never stretches itself far enough to really make that point. So I may be reading more into it than is intended.