It seems to me that Altman is doing two things here, the first is to recreate the style that proved to work so successfully on MASH, and also to continue to reassert himself into his role as a sort of bad boy anarchist filmmaker: you can see that every once in a while Altman needs to make an O.C. & Stiggs or a Ready to Wear just to make sure people know that he's still the same smartass bad boy he was in the 70s. OK, so now the idea of him trying to recreate the same style as he used in MASH and would use again in a more subdued sense in A Wedding. MASH was actually about something, and the style in which it was filmed added to the experience of the film itself, whether or not intentional, by adding these art film techniques (experiments in sound and editing, etc) Altman was saying something about war nad saying it with humor and sarcasm at that. A Wedding works because it is founded on a premise for a good comedy. Altman is digging into the everyday and ripping it apart from the inside out. The problem with Brewster is that its premise is so outlandish, so strange and detached from everyday reality that (as you have expressed in your post above) its hard to know just what we're supposed to make of it. Sure the contrast between birds and humans is a simple enough one, and someone on another board even went so far as to claim that Brewster is a Christ figure, but these are all impossible ideas to argue because around every corner is Altman's self indulgent thumbing his nose to the practices of conventional filmmaking. Sure ok, let's argue that birds signify freedom, redemption, we should desire to be like them, whatever, or that Brewster is Jesus, fine, but how does the strange narrator, the restarting of the opening credits, the strange car chase which seems to be either a nod to Bullit or the Dukes of Hazard, the recreation of Hot Lips' humilation from MASH in the water fountian etc. All these things seem to simply exist for themselves, to show how daring Altman is by doing them, and the effect is pure spectacle. This begs the question, does the film work on that level? And I suppose the answer is both yes and no, certainly it is enjoyable enough and I've always found Altman's snotty attitude to be, if not always successful, at least amusing, but if that's the case the film has this bird premise/allegory/whatever, lying around without use. Thus the film is always at odds with itself, because it is trying to be two things at once. If it were just a straight comedy that may have been fine, but the bird idea is too complex and weighty to be just shrugged off and have the film enjoyed for the simple purposes of entertainment. Brewster McCloud then seems to be critic proof, you can't give it the benifit of the doubt from either angle.
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