Quintet

I am one of those who was haunted by this film on first viewing and watched it for a second time soon afterward and understood - and appreciated - it far more as a result. It's often disingenuous to say that a film which so clearly divided opinion has to have something going for it but, in the case of Quintet, that is pleasingly true. By trawling the other comments about Quintet on the website, you can see that some people have a visceral dislike for the slow pace and unfolding of the film and a discontent with the actions and reactions of characters within it. Others point out that this is precisely the point of the film - it is profoundly nihilistic and demonstrates the breakdown of modern social conventions when a culture is forced to make a dramatic change to itself. Also, Quintet should be taken in the context of Marshall Mcluhan's comment: "the medium is the message". I wish I could claim this next comment as my own, because it's very perceptive, but it came from my then girlfriend: "This must have been what it was like for people in the last ice age, when just surviving was the priority and anything, even killing people, was a welcome break from the tedium". You see, Quintet isn't actually about how a society evolves to meet the challenges of environmental change; it's about how a society devolves to minimise the effect of environmental changes. Having watched this film again just last night, I agree even more with Altman's vision of where the human race is likely to go - I think he is remarkably prescient. Like 'Three Days of the Condor', this is a film that has, with the passing of time, become remarkably relevant to the world in which we live today.

I saw the film in Westwood, and I don't recall having anyone walk out of the theater. The film is decidedly depressing. It was written at a time when a lot of people in the country were very concerned that America and the Soviet Union were heading towards nuclear war. The catch word at that time was "nuclear winter". Scientists in the late 1970's had just announced to the world that a nuclear war was totally unwinnable---because if just 10% of the nuclear weapons on Earth were detonated anywhere on the planet, so much dust and debris would be thrown into the upper atmosphere that the sun's rays would be blocked, causing another ice age. This film is set in such an ice age. The main theme of the movie is that nothing is more important than love and caring about people, and your family, and children. In the film, we see a world where people have stopped loving others, and where the people have adopted a death culture. The film was not very entertaining, but it was a warning of where our culture could be heading if we weren't careful. The movie certainly made me think. It was a turning point in my life, and made me realize I had a duty to care about other people.

I finally have found others who unfortunately saw this ......movie? I did not get it at all. Sure it was post apocalyptic, but could a movie ever have been made so poorly as to leave an entire theater wondering what in the world did we just see? To this day I am still baffled by this ....movie? and have never been able to describe or discuss this film without the words: "worst movie I have ever seen!"

I really wanted to like this movie--I like Altman, I like Newman. I like science fiction and I liked the idea. And since this movie seems to be universally hated, I wanted to swim against the tide and find the intellectual quality in the movie that others seemed to be missing. All that going for it, and I still hated it.

Incomprehensible drivel.

And what's with the vaseline all over the camera lens? Folks who like this movie are fooling themselves, just because you dont understand a movie doesn't mean that it's deep, it means that the director and writer didn't know what they were doing.

Altman's Quintet has to be considered more than just flawed: As so many other reviewers have pointed out, the ideas behind the film, even some of the choices in depicting those ideas, ought to work--and yet very little in this difficult film does. The partially fogged camera lens--I remarked to my wife that it has to be the most distracting directorial conceit I've ever seen--never allowed me to get "into" the film's world.

In general there are serious problems with the mise-en-scene employed here. It's clear that no small amount of thought went into factors like costume and production design, but neither is very effective in evoking a believable world. Perhaps it is a matter of scale; the film is so stage-bound that I laughed out loud once it was mentioned that "five million" people lived in the city. (Yes I understand the constraints of the film's budget. Matte paintings here and there might have helped.) In all the most disappointing Altman film I've ever seen. Great ideas and grand metaphors do not always come through in art--it's just part of the game.