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Movie Reviews of Images
Movie Review: Can you work this out?
Summary: 4 Stars
Robert Altman's "Images" is a powerful and bewildering film. It's ability to throw the viewer completely numerous times throughout it's running time is something I have seldom encountered before while watching a psychological thriller. You'll need to have all your wits about you to appreciate what you see here.
The plot, as written on paper, is not complicated. Susannah York plays Cathryn, a married woman who seems rather highly strung and nervous. Together with her husband she goes to a remote house in the country to write a children's book. Once there, she gradually begins to lose her grip on reality. That's all I can really be sure about, because the viewer lives Cathryn's experience as fully as the character does. Throughout the movie, events happen that can't possibly be explained as rational or real, and the only possible explanation is that Cathryn is hallucinating. A film that does this without ever making it clear whether the audience it supposed to be able to work out what is reality and what is a dream, is audacious indeed. I watched, baffled, as Cathryn encountered various people who may or may not have actually been there, saw her own double moving around the landscape, received mocking telephone calls, and had whole conversations with someone in the room who then suddenly became someone else. It took the first 30 minutes of watching to become accustomed to how slickly the film tosses you between the various states of reality and unreality. Once I loosened up and started to just go with it, it was easier...oddly enough, I was mirroring the emotions of the main character, as she too realises that if she can't shake the nightmare off, she's going to have to just deal with it...watch the movie to see how she does!
Although disorientating, thanks to the overall quality of the film, it becomes a fairly gripping experience to actually watch. You really never know what is going to happen next, or what thing Cathryn has just experienced is going to turn out to have been imagined. And not in some corny, cliche-d way like a friend saying "But so-and-so couldn't have just been here - he died two weeks ago!". It's all much more subtle than that. As films that tamper with your perception of what is reality and what is not go, there are few other works that can rival this. It's been compared to Polanski's "Repulsion", and I think the comparison is fair, but "Images" manages to be an even more immersive experience than that film. Susannah York never hits a false note as the troubled Cathryn, and all the other actors do well, acting naturally and understatedly, especially Cathryn Harrison as the teenage daughter of one of the (few) other characters.
By the time the credits roll, you may feel terminally confused, speechless, or even cheated, but there's no doubt in my mind that you'll remember it as a fascinating 95 minute experience. This film is a significant contribution to the cinema as a whole, and quite a remarkable acheivement.
Movie Review: A brilliant and disturbing journey inside one woman's mind
Summary: 4 Stars
"Images" is another great movie from the master of the living paintings, Robert Altman. It is a brilliant, scary, beautiful, and very disturbing journey inside one woman's mind that was leaving her as the movie progressed. What we saw was not a ghost story but a very real descent to the world of nightmares and monsters that would not stop torturing the struggling and guilty mind for a second.
Susannah York as Cathryn, a young writer who tries to finish a children's book in a remote country home is simply breathtaking. She carries the movie (which only has five characters) almost by herself and being present in every scene, she is equally sympathetic and frightening. In his interview on DVD, Altman mentioned that he had started making the movie in Milan with Sophia Lauren. As much as I admire Lauren, I don't see anyone other than York playing Cathryn. While watching her, I kept thinking of her Alice in Pollack's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). Alice, one of the participants and victims of a killing dance marathon, loses her mind by the end of the movie and the scene where she breaks down mentally, was heartbreaking. Altman himself reminded me of the witches from Shakespeare's Macbeth that would throw all kinds of ingredients in their cauldron. The director mentioned how he would add the new details to the script as the real life situations changed: York was writing the children's book about Unicorns at the time - we can hear the long parts of her book in the background. I am not too crazy about the book but the idea seems to be brilliant. York had informed Altman that she could not make the movie because she was pregnant but Altman just decided to add her pregnancy to the script. There is some dry humor in the movie - all five characters have the first names of the actors who played them: Susannah played Cathryn and young Cathryn Harrison plays a girl named Susannah, Rene Auberjonois, Marcel Bozzuffi, and Hugh Millais played three men in Cathryn's life - Hugh, the husband, Rene - the neighbor, and Marcel, her dead lover (who was quite alive for a dead man, at least in her memory). John Williams wrote an absolutely unforgettable score for the film (it is not a melody, rather some strange, persistent, scary, and disturbing sounds - very experimental at the time, it is still quite unusual).
As for its visual site - the film that was made during one wet November in Ireland is brilliantly dark and hypnotizingly beautiful. I am jealous of everyone who was able to see it in all its glory on the big screen at the theater - it would be impossible to forget.
Movie Review: Fascinating Psychological Portrait
Summary: 4 Stars
Susannah York gives a fantastic performance as Cathryn, a wealthy English woman who may be mentally unstable. Alone in her home writing a children's book, she is interrupted by the apparent appearance of an old lover. Or is she? When her husband (Rene Aberjonois) arrives home and sees her distress, he whisks her away to their country home - a strangely drab cottage that seems to have been spray-painted black and gray. Her deterioration and inability to distinguish fact and fantasy continue unabated, particularly when her husband has to return to the city. What happens from there is highly open to interpretation.
"Images" is a strange, unsettling film, even for director Robert Altman. The initial pace is glacier-like and will undoubtedly leave many viewers bored and frustrated. However, you need to stick with it, as the film gradually gains momentum and climaxes with almost unbearable tension. The film has been compared to Roman Polanski's "Repulsion"; that film is superior to "Images," but the comparison is not completely inappropriate. Both chronicle a young woman's descent in madness when left alone; however, "Images" is less chilling and somewhat more convoluted, although with many merits of its own.
Filmed on location in Ireland, the film looks absolutely stunning, and the cinematography is so superior that it alone merits a viewing of "Images." Altman's direction is also first-rate and masterful, so much so that it somewhat detracts from the film - I was sometimes too busy watching his directing flourishes to pay attention to small plot details. Overall, "Images" is an intriguing movie-going experience that will likely appeal to many fans of Altman and viewers who appreciate films that can be obscure in nature.
Movie Review: A house of mirrors
Summary: 4 Stars
A film that's a little like trying to find your way out of a house of mirrors or an attempt to reassemble an image once it has been split by a prism. Since nothing is as it seems, we may as well be inside a fictionalized world; like the Unicorn story the main character, Cathryn, is writing. This fantasy is read aloud throughout the film creating a framework whose only relevance to the story unfolding, is to reassure us that we have stepped into a world that is a creation of the imagination; however, the fact that is comes from the mind of a schizophrenic is hardly reassuring. A glance at the cast of characters hints that they are not necessarily who or what they seem (Hugh is played by Rene, Rene is played by Marcel who is played by Hugh. Cathryn is played by Susannah and Susannah plays Cathryn). Insanity is not an ordering principle of the mind, but rather a vain attempt to put order to an ever-changing palette of images that may or may not be reflections of images within the mind instead of outside. A very atmospheric film made more so by the disturbing score that is not altogether in sync with the action, another technique that constantly keeps the viewer off balance.Movie Review: Reflections
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a good, mildly creepy movie. I would have titled it Reflections rather than Images, due to all of the mirror effects. It does come across as a 1970s style film, so could seem a little dated to some viewers. The topic of schizophrenia is covered fairly well, but for me, I do not have hallucinations; certainly not of myself or of dead people--yet. It almost seems to verge on multiple personality disorder. The main moments of fear are in what the main character will do and if she is really acting out her fantasies, or are they real. I can relate to the running narrative that goes on in her head. When I don't have music playing in my mind, I have this too. The director captured the harsh ringing of telephones and other loud, disturbing noises well. It may be hard for normal people to understand this hypersensitivity to noise, so this was handled well. It did remind me of a Roman Polanski film, but the storyline seemed more like his movie The Tenant than Repulsion.