Quintet

Altman's Quintet has to be considered more than just flawed: As so many other reviewers have pointed out, the ideas behind the film, even some of the choices in depicting those ideas, ought to work--and yet very little in this difficult film does. The partially fogged camera lens--I remarked to my wife that it has to be the most distracting directorial conceit I've ever seen--never allowed me to get "into" the film's world.

In general there are serious problems with the mise-en-scene employed here. It's clear that no small amount of thought went into factors like costume and production design, but neither is very effective in evoking a believable world. Perhaps it is a matter of scale; the film is so stage-bound that I laughed out loud once it was mentioned that "five million" people lived in the city. (Yes I understand the constraints of the film's budget. Matte paintings here and there might have helped.) In all the most disappointing Altman film I've ever seen. Great ideas and grand metaphors do not always come through in art--it's just part of the game.

I finally have found others who unfortunately saw this ......movie? I did not get it at all. Sure it was post apocalyptic, but could a movie ever have been made so poorly as to leave an entire theater wondering what in the world did we just see? To this day I am still baffled by this ....movie? and have never been able to describe or discuss this film without the words: "worst movie I have ever seen!"

I saw the film in Westwood, and I don't recall having anyone walk out of the theater. The film is decidedly depressing. It was written at a time when a lot of people in the country were very concerned that America and the Soviet Union were heading towards nuclear war. The catch word at that time was "nuclear winter". Scientists in the late 1970's had just announced to the world that a nuclear war was totally unwinnable---because if just 10% of the nuclear weapons on Earth were detonated anywhere on the planet, so much dust and debris would be thrown into the upper atmosphere that the sun's rays would be blocked, causing another ice age. This film is set in such an ice age. The main theme of the movie is that nothing is more important than love and caring about people, and your family, and children. In the film, we see a world where people have stopped loving others, and where the people have adopted a death culture. The film was not very entertaining, but it was a warning of where our culture could be heading if we weren't careful. The movie certainly made me think. It was a turning point in my life, and made me realize I had a duty to care about other people.

Sorry--whatever merits the story about the game may have, this movie really loses it with the details. This post-apocalyptic city seems to have plenty of light bulbs and electricity (where from who knows where), but apparently no one bothered to save an electric heater. I am sorry, but if you have electricity, why do you have to rely solely on fire for warmth? Also, some characters seem to have vaguely Italian accents while the rest are deadpan American.

And the dogs--jeez! Why aren't the people eating them (instead of the reverse)? And apparently only one breed survived. The dogs are a distraction and rather stupid. The movie could have worked on the level of the game, but the stupid "realistic" details were just the reverse and made the movie false and unwatchable.

Quintet marks the only venture of both Paul Newman and director Robert Altman into the realm of science fiction. It was said of Newman that he could not do comedy, but he tried until he finally scored a real success in that genre with Slap Shot. But the failure of this film left him gun shy and he never tried it again.

This is one of the biggest downer films I've ever seen. It's a futuristic ice age, brought on by who knows what, but presumably it's a nuclear winter. Even during the ice age of thousands of years ago, the equatorial parts of the earth still sustained animal and human life, but apparently not here. Seals have survived and Paul Newman is a seal hunter on the outside.

But hunters do need a little R&R and Newman goes to a futuristic city where things are so boring the natives have some kind of game played with six people and it's a kind of Russian roulette. To win you have to kill five other participants in your game.

It's a sad turn to see what man has come down to. Which is one of the reasons I just could not get into this story. The atmosphere is bleak, the story is bleak, the people are bleak, it's all so bleak. No wonder this thing came up short at the box office.

It's a film that just about everyone thinks is never going to be on the top ten list of Paul Newman films, including me.

This is man's future, what a bummer.