Robert Altmans Subliminal Reality

The most complete and compelling analysis available of Altmans films With his complex and unconventional films, Robert Altman often draws an impassioned response from critics but bafflement and indifference from the general public. Some audiences have dismissed his movies as insignificant, unsatisfying, and unreadable. Ironically, Altman might agree: he makes films in order to challenge filmgoerss expectations of straightforward narratives and easily understood endings. In Robert Altmans Subliminal Reality, Robert T. Self sheds light on Altmans work and provides the most comprehensive analysis of his films to date. With close readings of classics like MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Nashville, as well as more recent films like The Player, Short Cuts, and Cookies Fortune, Self asserts the value of Altmans work not only to film theory and the entertainment industry but to American culture itself. In his analysis, Self identifies Altmans films particularly as they address issues of form, identity, and industry. He explains how Altman critiques moviemaking forms by using an open, fragmented mode of storytelling and by turning conventional Hollywood genres inside out. He examines Altmans characterization of social and individual identity as fragile and fragmentary and his depiction of antiheroic characters debilitated by their socially constructed gender roles. Finally, Self shows how Altman challenges the entertainment industry itself, questioning its methods and motives and critiquing its role in our cultural alienation. Self frames his study of Altmans work with a discussion of the directors efforts to create a "subliminal reality" in his narrativesto touch audiences on an unconscious level and to recognize the unspoken, and unspeakable, dimensions in human interactions. According to Self, this striving for "subliminal reality" makes Altmans films not only exemplary of the potential of art cinema narration but instrumental in keeping such narrative alive.