how to get away with murder
by Douglas Messerli
by Douglas Messerli
Michael
Tolkin (writer, based on his fiction), Robert Altman (director) The Player / 1992
The
other morning I watched Robert Altman’s excellent film The Player on a Netflix disk. I had seen the film when it first
appeared in April or May in 1992, and I was now amazed by the fact that I could
still call up the scenes in my memory so specifically; obviously the film had
had a significant impact when I first witnessed it.
By coincidence—a concept which, given the
continual collision of parallel incidents my mind subconsciously and
significantly interlinks, I no longer believe—that same evening I
“accidentally” chose to watch Alfred Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry as our nightly TV fare. Almost immediately,
I realized the obvious relationships between the two films: both deal with a
murder (or, in Hitchcock’s case an accidental death) that results in good for
almost all the characters—in Hitchcock’s case, nearly all the figures of a small
local New England community. I have described it as regeneration of sorts (see My Year 2003); following the lead of
critic Lesley Brill, who argues that in this film “Death passes and life renews
without effort or anxiety,” I suggested that by continually burying and
unburying the dead man, the entire community is eventually transformed into a
world of new-found life and love.
Even more troubling for Mill, however, is
the postcards relaying threats upon his life he daily receives, some even
without a postmark. Obviously, he has offended a would-be script-writer, but,
given the vast number of well-meaning if self-deluded individuals he has
abused—in true studio form, encouraged and ignored in the repeated phrase “I’ll
get back to you”—who is the potential murderer? Leafing back into imaginary
period of time in his daily schedule, he comes to the conclusion that it must
be Kahane, and, looking up the man’s address, adventures out to Pasadena to
confront him. After discovering that the would-be-writer is attending a showing
of The Bicycle Thief (a film about
the terrible effects of a thief upon a simple working-man who depends on his
bicycle for his livelihood), Mill pretends to run into the writer with the
intention of offering him another chance, in hopes that the threats will be
ended. After a quick drink in local Japanese bar, Kahane makes it clear that
not only is he on to Mill’s game, but that—despite his own desire for Mill’s
death—the studio guardian has got the wrong man. After the two encounter each
other again on the street, Kahane accidentally pushes Mill into a pool of
water, angering Mill, who attacks the writer, pummeling and unintentionally
drowning him.
Although Kahane has previously described
his girlfriend as the “ice queen,” Mill quickly melts her in a desert spa, as
the two combine underwater sex with a far more shocking attempt at confession
by the man who previously would admit nothing. Mill’s sudden quick-thinking and
just plain luck (a would-be witness to the murder mistakenly choses the cop,
played by Lyle Lovett, in a line-up), result, just as suddenly, in a turnaround
in his career and in the marriage to and pregnancy of June Gudmundsdottir. She,
clearly—given her own hazy view of moral precepts—is the perfect partner for
the now redeemed “hero.”
Just as his would-be killer ultimately
rewards Mill with a story that is the very movie we are watching, so too does
he truly kill him, by pointing out his role: he is not a real person, but a
“player,” one of the cast of actors whom, as Altman so brilliantly reveals
throughout his artwork, are just as unreal when they are playing themselves as
they are when playing others. The vast cast of cameos roles (Steve Allen, Cher,
Harry Belafonte, Robert Carradine, James Coburn, Peter Falk, Teri Garr, Jeff
Goldblum, Buck Henry, Anjelica Huston, Malcolm McDowell, Julia Roberts, Nick
Nolte, Lily Tomlin, and Bruce Willis among dozens of others) are even less fully-dimensional
figures in their appearances in this work than they are in their performances
in other films. Despite the titillation they may offer, they remain merely
names. Just as Mills as Robbins is a player, so too is his “happy” life a myth
(like a griffin) a concoction of the mind. Once “The End” is scrolled across
the screen and the screen goes black, the player is dead.
If that is also true, of course, of every
figure in The Trouble with Harry; but
the significance of these characters’ lives, I suggest, has the potential, at
least, to remain in the mind and effect the viewers’ real-life being. And, in
that sense, Harry’s survivors remain stolidly “alive,” despite the fact that we
know they, too, are simply imitative figures dancing across the flickers of
light we have just witnessed.
After witnessing Griffin Mill’s life, I
suggest, no one but the already dead among us (the future simple-minded studio
executives-in-making) would want to emulate his experiences. While I’d gladly
travel through time, if I could, to be “ignited” by that Vermont fall skyline.
Howard even suggested that he would love to live in that little community for
rest of his life.
No, we won’t move to Vermont! With winter
coming on we’ll stay warm in Los Angeles, living out a version of our own happy
lives—without, one hopes, the lies involved in making motion pictures, and with
the recognition that, mostly, it’s only in the movies that you can get away
with murder.
Los Angeles,
October 4, 2014, Howard’s birthday
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