Re: Altman's smugness, it is a recurring trait/problem, but I find it most concentrated in his earlier works: I find later films like
Short Cuts,
Cookie's Fortune,
A Prairie Home Companion, and especially
The Company to have an almost nonjudgmental, kind of minimalist calm, as if Altman's just happily observing these people go about their business. The snark and the satire is very much toned down, and replaced by a tone of lifelike ambiguity; even
Short Cuts I find a very opaque, open-ended, democratic and compassionate film, especially compared to the more glibly cynical humor of
Nashville, let alone
MASH. And I don't find an ounce of smugness at all within
3 Women, undoubtedly Altman's finest and most affecting work. But yes, a smug quality is certainly found in
MASH,
The Player,
O.C. & Stiggs,
Thieves Like Us,
A Wedding, and
Ready to Wear, among others.
Anyway -- it's hard to articulate, but I think there's something very dark about
The Player which sets it apart for me. Not only "dark" like most Altman in terms of a cynical view of humanity, but in having this really uneasy atmosphere to it.
To me the point at the end of the movie isn't so much that the film-within is hilariously awful and that "real art" loses over commercial pap, but that Mill gets away unscathed, with triumphant music ushering his arrival home to the wife of the man he killed. Talk about the banality of evil -- it's a tired sentiment, but it's very well-expressed in this film in a roundabout way. And all this isn't biting because it's a Hollywood exec being depicted; it could be anyone and would still be disturbing. But Robbin's portrayal of Mill is interesting because he nicely straddles the line between being a clueless man sleepwalking through life and being a total manipulative asshole; you get the impression that his crimes are more out of convenience, coincidence and accident, and his covering up of them is solely to maintain his cushy lifestyle. He's a more nuanced character than Robbins' one-note power-hungry cop in Short Cuts, for example (one of the few weak links of that film for me).
It's just an unsettling and menacing film which seems even more menacing for placing itself within the glib, vapid, "fun" self-congratulatory atmosphere of Hollywood. Altman's made several better films, including a few outright masterworks, but I really find
The Player a unique work. I used to agree totally with domino and the rest of you guys but, I dunno, that last viewing just changed it for me. Now,
MASH, there's a highly-acclaimed Altman film that I find absolutely near-charmless and among his worst. There's also a ton of middle-tier Altman flicks which are good and may be some kind of undiscovered (by me) masterpiece, but would need another viewing to find out.
Actually, you know, I think that one of the reasons why I like this film is that it's a rare example of Altman almost completely making a typical one-protagonist film. There's a big ensemble cast, but the focus is almost exclusively on Griffin Mill. This, combined with the more disciplined noir narrative trappings, makes for a very interesting flick when combined with the usual cannabinated Altman tics.
Edit: OK, so this has nothing to do with anything really, but isn't De Palma's
Bonfire of the Vanities kind of like someone trying to make a really bad Altman film on purpose, and succeeding? It feels that way to me.
