Robert Altman is widely regarded as one of Hollywood’s eminent filmmakers of all time. It is the 1970s, however, with which he is most closely associated. Undoubtedly, late-career works like The Player and Short Cuts, released in the 1990s, remain among his most celebrated achievements. Still, few other filmmakers had as prolific or diverse runs as Altman in the decade of New Hollywood.
While one could argue that auteurs like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese made a more memorable impact with films like The Godfather (1972) and Taxi Driver (1976), Robert Altman did not find himself floundering in the decade’s denouement like other directors. He surprised critics and audiences with award-winning opuses like 3 Women (1977). Meanwhile, many New Hollywood filmmakers experienced creative challenges and misfires during this period. Think of the critical and commercial failure of Scorsese’s New York, New York (1977) or Coppola’s famously chaotic experience making 1979’s Apocalypse Now.
Against the burgeoning popularity of big-budget blockbusters like Star Wars (1977) and Saturday Night Fever (also 1977), Altman’s later New Hollywood films (like 3 Women) remain middle fingers to the de facto return of the conservative studio system in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and a call to prioritize creative expression over commerce (despite positive reviews and numerous accolades, 3 Women did not turn a profit) amid the death knells of the American New Wave.
Robert Altman dabbled in it all: war (M*A*S*H, 1970), revisionist Western (McCabe & Mrs. Miller, 1971), psychological horror (Images, 1972), period drama (Thieves Like Us, 1974), musical (Nashville, 1975), science fiction (Quintet, 1979), the rom-com (A Perfect Couple, 1979)…the list goes on. Unlike many other filmmakers of the era, Altman embraced genre versatility and used satire to plumb the tropes and possibilities of those genres. Satire, comedy, and absurdity were unconventional but not unexpected storytelling approaches that enabled Altman (and his viewers) to question mainstream cinematic conventions, the political powers that be, and societal constructs more broadly through his work. This approach was well-suited to Altman’s liberal disposition, so much so that Ronald Reagan dubbed his 1981 experimental comedy HealtH “the world’s worst movie.”
Another experimental comedy in Robert Altman’s filmography released the same calendar year as his more commercially successful M*A*S*H, is 1970’s, Brewster McCloud. Nearly 50 years after its initial theatrical release, it remains one of Altman’s more underrated and polarizing works, and yet his most vitally important one for anyone trying to make sense of the very absurd America we now know.
Brewster McCloud is a difficult film to pin down narratively — difficult, at least in terms of conventional Hollywood storytelling. As Roger Ebert noted in his review of the film for the Chicago Sun-Times: “We get the sense of a live intelligence, rushing things ahead on the screen, not worrying whether we’ll understand.” Altman’s film follows the titular Brewster (played by a young Bud Cort, pre-Harold and Maude), a bespectacled Baby Boomer living (illegally) in the fallout shelter of the Houston Astrodome who is building a set of massive bird-like wings that will enable him to fly.
Altman’s Icarus-like protagonist is aided by the efforts of Louise (Sally Kellerman, post-M*A*S*H, pre-Oscar nomination for that role), a mysterious blonde woman in a beige trench coat who appears to be Brewster’s Guardian Angel and who warns him against having sex should he wish to sacrifice his high-flying ambitions. Brewster does not heed this advice when he ultimately loses his virginity to dreamy Astrodome usher Suzanne (Shelley Duvall in her film debut). Meanwhile, Houston is plagued by a series of homicides, with victims found covered from head-to-toe in bird droppings and law enforcement (Michael Murphy and William Windom) unable to find the killer.
Brewster McCloud is New Hollywood filmmaking at its most witty and unapologetic. The central narrative is inexplicably interjected by an idiosyncratic professor named “The Lecturer” (Rene Auberjonois), who speaks directly to the audience from his classroom and, throughout the film, transforms into a bird. Meanwhile, Altman’s first foray into the film’s plot has two beginnings, and right away, the barriers between the filmmakers, the audience, and the action on-screen collapses. Altman’s lens pans from the ceiling of the Astrodome to Margaret Hamilton as Daphne Heap shrilly sings the National Anthem. (Hamilton played the Wicked Witch of the West in 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. Altman winks at the audience later in the film when Heap’s dead body is shown wearing ruby slippers). The song is quickly halted by her vitriolic claims that the band is in “the wrong key!” When she instructs everyone to start over, Altman’s camera whips back up to the ceiling of the Astrodome as the opening notes sound and the image of bright yellow font reading “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presents” appears a second time.
The first time Altman shows Brewster outside of the Astrodome is working, randomly, as a chauffeur for a creepy landlord named Abraham Wright (Stacy Keach in some of the best prosthetics and old-age makeup put to film), who swindles cash out of his homes for the sick and elderly and gets a kick out of verbally and physically terrorizing the staff. While Altman entertains this narrative thread for some time (mind you, it’s never made clear exactly how or why Brewster and Abraham know each other or why Brewster would want to work for him in the first place), he eventually decides to move on from this subplot. Altman merely leaves the audience with the image of a wheelchair-bound Keach veering through a stretch of Houston highway, causing car collisions before himself colliding into a patch of asphalt where he is left dead and covered in bird excrement. As for Brewster? Well, he just goes back to building his bird wings.
One might view the aforementioned choices as messy or misguided, indicating Altman’s seeming lack of skill or forethought as a filmmaker. By less adventurous standards, the abandonment of Keach’s narrative (and even Auberjonois’ ramblings) register as gaping plot holes and inconsequential distraction — stochastic storytelling techniques more readily found in a filmmaker like Tommy Wiseau. But Altman knows exactly what he is doing. It is precisely his deliberateness with such kookiness, and an understanding of the inherently kooky social and political context that his film was borne out of, that elevates Brewster McCloud from inanity to excellence.
For all his film’s bizarreness, Robert Altman does not keep his audience at arm’s length. He invites us into Brewster McCloud’s absurd world, assuring us that within this cinematic universe, he is not discarding logic or convention; rather, he is reinventing it. In the film’s very resistance to and reinvention of “conventional” storytelling, one can understand its ultimate message and purpose, much like how Brewster’s own high-flying ambitions within the narrative resist and reinvent “conventional” human behavior.
Ultimately, Brewster McCloud is a film of mockery and defiance, particularly of mainstream social constructs and even the laws of the universe. Altman mocks and defies the laws of gravity: before his sudden death, Brewster does find himself gliding quite successfully through the air. Altman mocks and defies the patriarchy: Bud Cort, our bespectacled hero, and romantic lead, is generally withdrawn and nerdy — far from “suave” or charismatic in a traditionally “masculine” way. Furthermore, it is by Suzanne’s sexual prowess that he — not her — falls victim. (Upon losing his virginity to Suzanne, Brewster alludes to his involvement with the murders, and Suzanne notifies the police).
Altman mocks and defies bigotry and conservatism: every murder victim, from Margaret Hamilton’s Daphne Heap to Bert Remsen’s Officer Breen, is racist, puritanical, or morally bankrupt in some way. Altman mocks and defies the law: every police officer in the film is a clueless and bumbling caricature, futile in their attempts to solve crimes or do anything effective with their jobs. Altman even mocks and defies tidy narrative resolution and good taste. As Brewster crashes to his death at the base of the Astrodome, a crumpled mass of bones and flesh beneath broken bird wings, a literal circus ensues that breaks the fourth wall and introduces each cast member, garishly costumed and made-up before the end credits scroll.
Brewster McCloud’s conclusion is abrupt and anticlimactic, tying no loose ends. The hero is dead. The crimes that inform the film’s story are never truly solved or brought to justice. (While it is indicated that Brewster and/or Louise are responsible for the murders, the viewer is never provided any narrative explication or resolution regarding this plot point). A sense of “incompleteness” emerges, denoted by Brewster’s literal death, his de facto gravesite danced upon by a troupe of spaced-out, costumed circus performers.
It is nonsensical, but Altman knows exactly what he is doing. He is forcing the viewer to sit with what feels uncomfortable and to acknowledge absurdity as a part — even a way — of life. By recognizing that we, like the characters in Brewster McCloud, exist perpetually in a world of lunacy and uncertainty, we can resist rigidity and conformity and eschew the cookie-cutter ways of being that greater social and cultural forces have constructed for us and forced us to accept without question. Why can’t humans build bird wings and fly? Why must we obey the police? Why must murderers be found and convicted? In terms of cinematic convention, why must a hero like Brewster survive in a film or have a complete backstory? Why must the audience have full closure with the Abraham Wright subplot or know of Louise’s future or Suzanne’s impending love affairs?
In Richard Nixon’s America — an America defined by political violence and corruption, the Vietnam War, economic straits, and post-flower power fatalism — absurdity, uncertainty, and lunacy were life. (This fact was on many people’s minds at the time — think of Thomas Nagel’s seminal philosophical essay “The Absurd”, published less than a year after Brewster McCloud’s release). It is precisely under these political and sociological conditions that one must understand Brewster McCloud, as it is from these factors that Altman crafted such an absurd albeit liberating vision. Brewster McCloud exists distinctly in this sociological imagination. It is no wonder its popularity (and availability) diminished over the decades while a film like M*A*S*H remained more widely known. As Jeffrey M. Anderson noted in Combustible Celluloid, “The film is so odd and freewheeling that it probably should have become a cult classic, if not for the fact that it has been so hard to find on video”. Brewster McCloud’s knack for absurdism may have proven largely incompatible with the complex and varied morals the American public contended with following the dissolution of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s counterculture.
Yet, is America in 2019 all that different from America in 1970? As contemporary moviegoers embrace Altman’s filmography with gusto (he is one of the most cataloged directors in the Criterion Collection), it is important to recognize the affinity we might have with a movie like Brewster McCloud in our present climate. At this moment, we exist in an America similarly defined by political violence and corruption, war, economic straits, and Trump-era fatalism. As in 1970, absurdity, uncertainty, and lunacy are life once again.
There is something cathartic about how Brewster McCloud embraces whimsy in the face of dysfunction. This ethos can give us the power to become like the joyous circus performers at the end of Altman’s film, dancing and milling about amidst the wreckage of an absurd and unjust society. It can also give us the most telling mirror of ourselves in a most freeing way. For all of its lack of logic, for all its randomness, for all of its disruptive and combative qualities, Altman’s film remains prophetic and evergreen. Furthermore, by breaking the fourth wall and acknowledging the viewer’s presence throughout, Altman intimately involves us with everything that happens on-screen in his film. We are not exempt or removed from the bizarre world of Brewster McCloud because the world of Brewster McCloud is our world.
Robert Altman’s lesser-known comedy from 1970 is undeniably zany. It presents its viewers with a universe where men fly, where sex can destroy your dreams, and where fallen angels come to earth to shoplift and cavort in public fountains. No wonder MGM marketed it as “a different kind of film.” Altman takes everything we know and are comfortable with in our society and turns it upside down. In doing so, he shows us that Brewster McCloud is not the antithesis of our society but rather a witty and prescient reflection of it — and that our “logical” world isn’t so logical after all.