QUINTET (1979) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Robert Altman
Paul Newman, Bibi Andersson, Fernando Rey,
Vittorio Gassman, Nina Van Pallandt, Brigitte Fossey
Cryptic, ice-age sci-fi about a seal hunter (Paul Newman) who walks in out of a frozen wasteland to look for work in the city, because there are no more seals to hunt. In the city, icicles hang down everywhere. Packs of wild dogs feast on corpses left in the streets. Food and fuel are scarce. There is no work. Instead, everybody plays Quintet, a board game that both reflects and determines the fates of its players. It's hard to know what to make of this, but it's definitely not like anything else, terse and ghoulish, somber and playful, one of Altman's most mystifying visions, and probably the strangest thing Newman ever did. Filmed in the middle of a Canadian winter, in and around the crumbling remains of the 1967 Montreal World's Fair, it doesn't look like anything else, either.
