A very good movie

It had been a while since I saw a movie directed by Robert Altman and since this one is considered as one of his ultimate masterpieces, I was really eager to check it out. While watching this, I realized that Altman is actually a rather difficult director. I mean, it is not that his movies are really cryptic or difficult to follow like with David Lynch or Kim Ki-Duk for example, but he definitely has a very oblic approach concerning his directing which might explain why I have sometimes a hard time with his movies. Basically, he usually puts his camera in the middle of the scene and leave the characters do the talking but there is no real editing and, sometimes, you have 5 characters speaking to each other, sometimes improvising their dialogues which have nothing to do with the plot. It is like when someone gets into a room, normally, he would be presented to the audience somehow but, since the characters already know this person, they just skip this. As a result, you get something really realistic and this directing style definitely was Robert Altman’s trademark but, honestly, I think I find it rather alienating. I mean, there is something pretty mesmerizing about this directing style but I think it is also creates a gap between the audience and the characters. Still, even though this movie didn’t really blow me away, it looked quite terrific, the songs provided by Leonard Cohen were a perfect fit and it must be one of the gloomiest Western I have ever seen. To conclude, I think it is a really nice flick and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Robert Altman’s work.

8/10