2 hours ago
(This post was last modified: 2 hours ago by C C.)
1977 flick of Robert Altman's that quickly disappeared from the movie landscape until The Criterion Collection remastered it in the early 2000s. Has some David Lynch like resonances in it, particularly Mulholland Drive (maybe Lynch even got his salvage inspiration for the latter from "3 Women"). Doesn't hurt to compare it to the surreality of the 1968 film The Swimmer, too, which I watched just the day before.
Roger Ebert gave it four stars back in the day, but Gene Siskel (2 and a half stars) watched it twice and still couldn't make any sense of it even as allegory. The key might be to treat the ending as the actual reality, and what preceded it as a figurative hallucination or psychological subversion, where identities can migrate to different characters in the dream at times. Some even suggest that it concludes a trilogy of mental condition themes first explored in Altman's "That Cold Day in the Park" (1969) and "Images" (1972).
At any rate -- the quaint behaviors, Sissy Spacek's chidlike eccentricity, and odd portraits of situations and personalities is sort of worth something in itself. Even if the viewer struggles to construe where it's going or what _X_ development indicates.
"3 Women" - Criterion Collection trailer ... https://youtu.be/hPlPg16gwJo
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/hPlPg16gwJo
Roger Ebert gave it four stars back in the day, but Gene Siskel (2 and a half stars) watched it twice and still couldn't make any sense of it even as allegory. The key might be to treat the ending as the actual reality, and what preceded it as a figurative hallucination or psychological subversion, where identities can migrate to different characters in the dream at times. Some even suggest that it concludes a trilogy of mental condition themes first explored in Altman's "That Cold Day in the Park" (1969) and "Images" (1972).
At any rate -- the quaint behaviors, Sissy Spacek's chidlike eccentricity, and odd portraits of situations and personalities is sort of worth something in itself. Even if the viewer struggles to construe where it's going or what _X_ development indicates.
"3 Women" - Criterion Collection trailer ... https://youtu.be/hPlPg16gwJo
