The Company

Robert Altman is, I think, a one-man primer on plot for new media.

The Company is a fine film about dance -- a subject of which I know nothing beyond the familiar film and theater cliches. (I once knew a dancer who gave up and went to Harvard to be a chemical physicist; after she did that, you turned into a novelist. Dancing's a tough racket.)

The big plot tension in The Company comes from those cliches: you see the cliche coming down the track and you're captivated by the question, "How will our hero escape certain catastrophe?" It's a dance movie: you know the dancer is going to fall in love with the wrong guy. She does. It's a dance movie: someone's gonna get injured. They do. Someone is going to have to say, "But the show must go on!" They say it. It's a dance movie: there's going to be a pompous old ass spouting homilies. There is.

And all of this somehow unfolds naturally, and (incredibly) always turns away from trite melodrama at the very last moment.

The way Altman drives The Company is quite different from the way he drives Gosford Park or M*A*S*H. And all of these are quite different from each other, and also from his masterpiece, Nashville. I think all this repays study -- especially since Altman's signature style holds an obvious affinity for hypertextuality.