IMAGES B+
USA Great Britain Ireland (101 mi) 1972 ‘Scope d: Robert Altman
USA Great Britain Ireland (101 mi) 1972 ‘Scope d: Robert Altman
I’m not really making
love with him. That will make anything
all right.
—Cathryn (Susannah York)
Made at the peak of his creative powers between McCabe
& Mrs. Miller (1971) and The
Long Goodbye (1973), two of the director’s most memorable works, Altman
made this strange little film about schizophrenia, the second of his “Female
Subjectivity” Trilogy, coming between That
Cold Day In the Park (1969) and 3 Women
(1977). While it’s not hard to imagine a little girl
living in a fantasy world of fairy tales and dreams, viewed as the picture of
innocence, yet here’s it’s a beautiful grown woman who appears equally stuck in
an imaginary world, a strange and haunting place where the world is not as it
seems, where reality comes and goes with the whims of the imagination, all
running together creating a peculiar netherworld, much like the macabre and
sinister universe of Carl Dreyer’s VAMPYR (1932), but this is the world as she
sees it, where she seemingly floats in and out of both worlds, as the film
takes place almost entirely inside a woman’s subconscious. It’s interestingly one of the least
Altmanesque films the director has ever made, where it doesn’t feature
overlapping dialogue, a multitude of characters, multiple themes, several
events happening simultaneously within the same frame, or an improvisational
feel, instead it has a narrow focus, perhaps his most complete foray into the
horror genre with its array of creepy effects, venturing into the Dario Argento
art house horror genre to reveal one woman’s descent into madness. Susannah York won the Best Actress Award at
the premiere in Cannes, where Sandra Dennis in That
Cold Day In the Park is a direct link to Susannah York here, offering a
striking performance as the central character Cathryn, where the camera never leaves
her, as Altman uses a more experimental style to capture a woman caught between
two worlds, both merging into one another, with a brilliant sound design by musical
composer John Williams and Japanese percussionist Stomu Yamash’ta, mixing wind
chimes fluttering in the breeze with special sound effects to reflect her
altered state of consciousness, where the audience is continually questioning
what is real and what isn’t. Cathryn has
a complacently bourgeois husband Hugh, René Auberjonois, who sees the world as
it is, representing one reality, combined with the world as it appears to her,
where the majority of the film is reflective of her continuously fluctuating
interior moods. When viewed as a
cultural oppression of women, there seems to be little fallback position, as
Cathryn both rebels against and then withdraws from her real husband, inventing
alternative options only through an abnormal psychology, perhaps viewed as
unfathomable by men, where throughout the trilogy Altman deals with the crises
of women through various internalized neuroses. On the other hand, it’s not too far fetched to
see the film as a portrait of an artist, seeing the world much as Cathryn does,
where the jagged edges of creative artistry continually fluctuate and evolve over
time.
Originating from an Altman idea, the film is brilliantly
shot in Ireland around a lakeland location of Lough Bray, County Wicklow by
cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, with breathtaking panoramic vistas capturing a
wintry desolation, where much of this film has a painterly appearance,
beautifully mixing the natural pastoral beauty outside, occasionally delving
into fantasy, with exquisitely designed interior sets by Leon Ericksen that
reflect a super modern look, where each door or room leads to another world,
all feeding into Cathryn’s psychosis. Opening
with a story that she’s writing that at the same time is taking her into a
world that is frightening, the entire film is layered in a children’s book
called In Search of Unicorns, a
children’s fantasy novel actually written by Susannah York that she narrates
throughout, where the story is her escapism from her twisted sense of reality,
finding comfort in the safety of children’s images, where things the audience
sees appear to be other things to her.
Throughout the film, the presence of the camera gives the viewer the
intimate effect of being outside looking in, where there are strange
incongruities throughout, becoming a fascinating portrait of mental instability,
much of it captured with dreamlike imagery.
The audience is immediately struck by her distorted sense of reality,
where she suspects her husband of sexual indiscretions that exist only in her
own mind, which is probably her way of avoiding her own indiscretions. Perhaps the biggest jolt is when her husband
Hugh turns into someone who isn’t there, René (Marcel Bozzuffi), a ghost from
the past who has come to pay a visit, where the “visitor” remains to her just
as real as anything else. While she
tries to ignore the reappearance of these haunting apparitions, knowing in some
instances (a dead lover) they’re not really there, but they inevitably lure her
into their sexual fantasies where she relives past experiences in her life that
are most likely based on real occurrences, where for her, the present and the
past exist simultaneously, like a kind of involuntary time traveling, which is
especially evident in a scene when she stands atop a hill overlooking a view of
herself pulling into a driveway below. It’s
not a stretch to think this influenced Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING (1980),
with Jack Nicholson similarly gazing down into the maze at the Overlook Hotel,
tracking his wife and son as they navigate its corridors.
When her husband Hugh takes her out to their country estate,
a dream cottage beautifully located on a lake and within walking distance of a
majestic waterfall in what appears to be a magical forest with a herd of sheep
running free, Cathryn continues to see visions, having violent episodes often
when she’s left alone, where the world closes in on her much like Catherine
Deneuve’s hallucinations in Roman Polanski’s REPULSION (1965). Haunted by unwelcome memories that she tries
to suppress, and the thought of a lonely childhood where she was often forced
to “invent” friends, we’re never told specifically what is ailing Cathryn, or
if the frequency and intensity of her schizophrenic episodes have grown more
acute. Instead, alone with the
subjective point of view of the central figure, the audience is reeled into the
same claustrophobic existence where these episodes are conspiring against
her. Hugh also brings home a creepy old
friend, Marcel (Hugh Millais), who has recently obtained custody of his 12-year
old daughter Susannah (Cathryn Harrison), who bears a striking resemblance to a
young Cathryn. The lecherous Marcel
instantly hits on Cathryn, much like René, with both characters (along with her
husband) feeling almost interchangeable, where they obviously have some
history, though it’s Susannah that attracts the attention of Cathryn, where
they’re both seen attempting to piece together a jigsaw puzzle of what turns
out to be the country house where they live, where it’s clear in Susannah she
sees a younger version of herself, fused together in a mirror image out of Bergman’s
PERSONA (1966), where the lines of reality are blurred, mixed with the fantasy
elements of the story and the nearby magical forest. Marcel’s perceived sexual aggressiveness is
fended off while at the same time succumbed to, where he tells her, “You know
what you are? You’re a schizo one minute
fighting like a tiger and the next all love and kisses.” Because she imagines characters that don’t
exist, she can’t distinguish whether his sexual advances are real, though she
eventually confronts her “visitors,” awakening something deeply unsettling
inside that resembles a madness within, where eventually the dead mix with
what’s real, and she’s left questioning what she’s done. Cathryn is always quick to invent fictitious
scenarios to explain what otherwise resembles a catastrophe, as schizophrenics
that live with this condition are used to covering up their hallucinations,
where they routinely invent excuses or lies to convince others that
everything’s all right, even as they are slipping further into the void.
By the end, Altman’s film resembles the surreal landscape of
David Lynch’s LOST HIGHWAY (1997) with its infamous identity schism. Cathryn drives along the road at night
returning back to the city for what she believes is her waiting husband, where
she encounters along the way, among other things, haunting images of ghosts,
including one of herself beckoning for help, “Let me in Cathryn. What’s the matter with you?” where she is
literally fighting for control of her own soul, which appears fragile and easily
lost in the mist. She thinks she has a
handle on her visions, growing elated at the thought all the ghosts are gone,
leaving her feeling somewhat euphoric, driving ecstatically through a
phantasmagorical world of brightly saturated colors, illusion and hallucination,
where Altman loves to use shots through glass, odd camera angles, zoom in and
out of focus, or use mirrored images that serve as reflections of the past,
providing an altered expression of reality, where the camera sees what Cathryn
sees throughout, a window into schizophrenia.
The entire film plays out like a nightmarish fever dream that literally
breathes psychological intensity, using eerie and atmospheric sounds of
percussion along with weird images that seem to offer a view of the occult. The film is an impressionistic drama that
takes us on a mysterious journey into the maze of a mental labyrinth, where
each twist and turn leaves us even further removed from where we started. By the end, Cathryn remains an Alice down the
rabbit hole enigma and has only retreated further into her stories, where her
grip on reality is even less tenuous, relying upon the kindness of others,
“Hugh will be here in a moment and we’ll see who’s here and who isn’t.” The complex and smartly thought-out film is well
acted, beautifully constructed, and not like anything else Altman has ever
done, where he presents the fear and isolation associated with a personality
disorder, showing how little support and actual communication is offered,
reflecting the depths of alienation and trauma.
One of the clever touches is Altman creating characters using the real
names of the actors, where Cathryn is played by Susannah York, Susannah is
played by Cathryn Harrison, René is played by Marcel Bozzuffi, Marcel is played
by Hugh Millais, and Hugh is played by René Auberjonois. The film was originally released in Chicago
at the Biograph Theater on a double bill with Nicolas Roeg’s Don't
Look Now (1973), both emotionally cold films, but dreamy, psychologically obtuse
thrillers having much in common, particularly in the extraordinary visual
compositions and artful expression of a fractured reality, but this is one of
the few Altman films that actually excels in weaving a tightly constructed
narrative.
