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3 Women

post #1 of 5
12/16/10 at 2:44pm
Thread Starter 
I searched for a thread on this movie, and I didn't find one. Please don't run me out of town if my google-fu has failed me...

I recently saw this flick for the first time, and it was... amazing. Certain pieces of it, the most obvious being the ending, didn't make much sense to me until I did some reading on the film:

Criterion Essay

Ebert's Analysis

I find it fascinating that Altman based everything about this movie on a single dream he had. I really wasn't aware of the whole audience-experience-as-dream theory until Inception came out, and this single idea has really come to dominate the way I watch movies.

Somehow, after reading about 3 Women, I instantly found myself comparing it to Inception. The narrative in Inception is, on its topmost level, about dreaming, but 3 Women immerses you in the dream that inspired Altman. After finishing the movie and reading the essays posted above, I realized that Altman had successfully communicated to me what a dream in his head feels like. Crazy.

Anyways, what's the Chud consensus on this film? Is it well received here? Are there any other Altman gems I should check out?
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post #2 of 5
12/16/10 at 3:03pm
What stuck with me from the film was Shelley Duvall's character, the open desperation in her interactions with people. In the commentary Altman said most of the character was made up by her including the recipe she lists at one point. It made me think she should be/should have been front and center more often in films.

The metaphysical ending was fine, but ultimately the push and pull between her and Spacek was what I cared about and would have preferred a movie without the third character. As far as Altman, my favorites are Gould-based: California Split and Long Goodbye.
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post #3 of 5
12/16/10 at 10:45pm
Thread Starter 
I completely agree about Duvall's portrayal of "thoroughly modern" Millie. The word "desperate" is the perfect adjective to describe both the character and performance, which serves to really draw you into the her world and the film's universe. The image I keep seeing is her "conversation" with the young doctors in the hospital cafeteria.

I also felt that the third character was very tangential, but I feel that it served to enhance the dreamlike state of the movie. I often dream about people I've never met or seen before, and their actions are often inscrutable, so this may have colored my viewing of the film.

I'm definitely interested in seeing more Altman flicks. Are California Split and Long Goodbye of a similar style and tone to 3 Women, or are they different animals?
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post #4 of 5
12/17/10 at 2:35am
They're different animals. For me they're about watching Elliot Gould bullshit his way through life, a very non-dreamy one. Maybe they're like 3 Women in the way they build to endings with this measured, kind of scary quality. Also, you should watch McCabe and Mrs. Miller.
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post #5 of 5
1/10/11 at 10:23am

If you want something closer in tone with 3 Women, I'd go with Images. But none of Altman's films really quite feel like this one. It's funny because his naturalistic improvised dialogue and attention to detail always made his films very real and immediate to me, but when you combine that feeling of reality with his typically languid camerawork, he really is uniquely suited to capture the feeling of dreaming on film. At least, the way I dream.

 

I love when the ending of films forces you to view everything you previously saw in a different context. Films like Das Boot or the previously mentioned Inception (or, really, all non-Batman Nolan films) feature final scenes that make you question what you just saw, what you previously felt, but I'm not sure either does as good a job as 3 Women. Even before I read the Ebert review where Altman told him that he "thinks that Edgar is buried under the tires" I kind of suspected that. The ending forces you to reevaluate the relationships between these women, and how these relationships work in general. Mostly I began to wonder what the differences between being an older sister (which is how I viewed Millie and Pinky's relationship) and being a mother (which is the context given at the end).

 

This is probably one of David Lynch's favorite movies. Dreaming, identity crises, twins. And this movie features one of the most jaw-dropping dream sequences I've ever seen.

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