KANSAS CITY
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Miranda Richardson, Harry Belafonte, Michael Murphy, Dermot Mulroney. Screenplay: Robert Altman, Frank Barhydt. Director: Robert Altman. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
It is a very risky think Robert Altman is attempting in KANSAS CITY, but then Altman has never shied away from risk. At the height of the Vietnam War, he made the darkly anti-establishment MASH; he turned free-form character study into the brilliant NASHVILLE; he made satires of the very insider worlds of Hollywood film-making (THE PLAYER) and high fashion (READY-TO-WEAR). For the most part, however, those were risks in subject matter. In KANSAS CITY, Altman structures his narrative like an improvisational jazz solo, with a payoff in the final ten minutes that is a real kicker. The question is whether he will have lost his audience in the 100 minutes of riffes which precede it.
KANSAS CITY takes place over the course of two days in the title city in 1934 leading up to municipal elections, beginning with the kidnapping of Carolyn Stilton (Miranda Richardson) by Blondie O'Hara (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Carolyn is the wife of Henry Stilton (Michael Murphy), a local political leader Blondie believes can help her with a serious problem. It seems that her husband Johnny (Dermot Mulroney) made the mistake of robbing a black gambler while wearing blackface, incurring the wrath of black crime boss Seldom Seen (Harry Belafonte), and Blondie wants Henry to do whatever is necessary to orchestrate Johnny's safe release. With the laudanum-addicted Carolyn as her hostage, Blondie moves through every level of Kansas City society, waiting for the word which will bring her Johnny marching home.
Altman has a very specific image of Kansas City he is trying to get across, and he accomplishes that task. It is a city which seems to exist outside of the time, with races mixing in jazz clubs, liquor flowing freely despite Prohibition, prosperity still evidenty despite Depression. It is also a city where the petty corruption of gambling and alcohol exists side by side with the hard-core corruption of the brutal Democratic political machine controlled by Tom Pendergast, and where violence was the real law. The soundtrack crackles with magnificent jazz tracks, a constant underscore to brutatlity, and Altman grounds his story in the city's real history by incorporating Pendergast and a young saxophone player named Charlie Parker (Albert J. Burnes) into the events fo the story.
The product of those elements is a fusion of music, mood and plot in which the latter often gets short shrift. Altman has one of his typically large casts to keep track of, and his shifts back and forth between them seem to have little to do with pacing. The encounters between Seldom Seen and Johnny are basically a series of monologues in which Belafonte's Seldom holds forth with his captive audience on race relations, the media, his beloved jazz music and whatever other issue happens to strike his fancy. Those speeches are far from riveting -- once you get the point that he is "seldom seen and often heard," Seldom's sociological observations simply serve to stall KANSAS CITY. The same is true of a sub-plot involving Charlie Parker and a pregnant teen-ager (Ajia Mignon Johnson) which eventually proves relevant but is largely distracting while you are waiting. Even the ostensible main plot, the relationship between Blondie and Carolyn, is troublesome. For a long time, it seems to be just another example of the kind of film I criticized MANNY & LO for being, a hostage drama in which captor and captive predictably become friends.
Then, just as I was prepared to give KANSAS CITY up for dead, it assaulted me with developments so unexpected that they left me breathless. Suddenly, a performance by Jennifer Jason Leigh which had seemed like just another one of her mannered stabs at imitating 1930s screen actresses made beautiful, terrible sense; suddenly, Miranda Richardson's opium-addled society dame was even funnier and more tragic; suddenly, the Johnny who had been little more than a piece of furniture during Seldom's speeches came to life. After struggling through most of its running time, KANSAS CITY heads for the finish line in a dead sprint. The problem is that by the time Altman begins his kick, he's nearly out of the race. KANSAS CITY's tale of brutal truths beneath glossy surfaces is the polar opposite of most of this summer's fare: it is a film which works far better when you are thinking about it afterwards than it does while you are watching it. I only hope audiences are willing to trust Altman the risk-taker as long as it takes.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 Kansas City chiefs: 7.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw
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