Alt­man

How the heck do you con­dense the life’s work of one of America’s most pro­lif­ic auteurs into a neat 90-minute doc­u­men­tary? Just ask direc­tor Ron Mann, who pro­vides a rather adept solu­tion in his new film, which offers a wel­come refresh­er of a bona fide cin­e­mat­ic icon almost a decade on from his death. In Alt­man, Mann recruits var­i­ous long-time admir­ers and col­lab­o­ra­tors, ask­ing them to pro­vide their per­son­al def­i­n­i­tion of the phrase ​‘Alt­manesque.’ It’s a bril­liant­ly sim­ple approach, with each respondent’s inter­pre­ta­tion con­tribut­ing to a sequence of snap­shots of this sin­gu­lar director.

The respons­es range from droll (“Kick­ing Hollywood’s ass,” smiles Bruce Willis) to poignant (“Expect­ing the unex­pect­ed,” offers a wist­ful Robin Williams), and each feels as much a reflec­tion of the inter­vie­wees’ per­son­al­i­ties as Altman’s. But this is much more than talk­ing heads dri­ven hagiog­ra­phy. Draw­ing on a wealth of archive mate­r­i­al, Mann goes to great lengths to bet­ter under­stand Altman’s cre­ative process while util­is­ing key scenes from some of his bet­ter known and most revered works – MASH, Nashville, Short Cuts, Gos­ford Park – to rein­force the gen­er­al view that he was by turns a mav­er­ick and a visionary.

Altman’s rep­u­ta­tion and artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ties are well doc­u­ment­ed, of course, and to that end it is par­tic­u­lar­ly reward­ing to learn more about the ear­ly stages of his career, in par­tic­u­lar his tran­si­tion from tele­vi­sion to film in the ​’50s and ​’60s via shows such as Com­bat! and Whirly­birds. Most fas­ci­nat­ing of all is a seg­ment on Altman’s 1980 com­mer­cial flop Pop­eye, which Mann makes a con­vinc­ing case for being a mis­un­der­stood musi­cal com­e­dy clas­sic. Although Altman’s genius was by no means absolute, his abil­i­ty to con­stant­ly roll with the punch­es undoubt­ed­ly enabled him to make a last­ing impact on his craft.