Brewster McCloud (1970) 105m.
Even those who aren't taken with Robert Altman's style of film-making have to admire him for maintaining an affection for off-Hollywood (as in the manner of off-Broadway) projects throughout his long career. Audiences who had enjoyed Altman's breakthrough anti-war comedy M*A*S*H* in 1970 were interested to see what he would come up with for an encore. The result, a mere 11 months later, was his laconic fable BREWSTER McCLOUD.
Bud Cort plays the title character, a loner who lives beneath the Houston Astrodome working on a pair of man-powered wings that will enable him to fly. While he is busy collecting the materials he needs, mysterious deaths by strangulation occur throughout the city. What's the link? Birds. Altman's running joke through this movie is that it is a birdwatching film, with avian references appearing everywhere, from the meals the characters eat to the license plates on their cars. Over the course of the film a narrator (Rene Auberjonois) compares the appearance and behavior of people in the story with that of birds while increasingly becoming more birdlike himself. These constant bird motifs would appear to reflect the flight-obsessed thoughts circulating through the characters' minds. It seems to me that Brewster's desire to fly is not because he has some kind of Icarus complex or any affinity with birds in general (although he is rather owl-like) but that he is acting upon a type of race memory buried deep within him. It's as if he knows that we were all once born to fly, but have forsaken and forgotten it.
Brewster is aided in his quest by Louise (Sally Kellerman), an elusive mixture of mother and mentor, but more pertinently a guardian angel, who has scars down her back that suggests she once had wings herself. Even though all Brewster wants to do is take flight (the only time we see him happy in the film is when he finds himself airborne) it is never made clear why, or even where to. Could it be that he is trying to reach a subconscious memory of heaven? The redemption angle is reinforced further when Louise is dismayed to find that he has slept with a girl he has barely known (Shelley Duvall, who had never acted until her debut in this film). These sins of the flesh equal a loss of purity that will 'ground' him, i.e. seal his mortality and prevent his entry into the angel-world. The only would-be girlfriend of Brewster's to get approval from Louise is Hope (Jennifer Salt), who is able to get sexual satisfaction from their relationship while still keeping it entirely platonic (and, as Emily Dickinson said, "Hope is the thing with feathers", although I'm obviously straining the motif at this point). Hope also appears in the guise of Dorothy, one of a few WIZARD OF OZ references in the film (there's also ruby slippers and a cameo from Margaret Hamilton). I'm not sure why Altman included these - another man-bird meld would be the flying monkeys, I guess - but it could be to remind us that the whole film is 'only a story' (hence the narrator). I'll go along with this until the film's closing credits, which abruptly introduces a circus troupe to present the cast, because I think it detracts from the film's conclusion. Perhaps Altman didn't want viewers to think his black comedy had gotten too cynical. There's touches of that, but there's also humor and contemplation. Even though this isn't one of his better-known films I still find the scene of Brewster circling the Astrodome in flight one of Altman's most enduring images.
sburridge@hotmail.com
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