The title sounds like a definitive statement on the director who passed away in 2006 but Ron Mann’s documentary is unfortunately merely a broad outline.
With a narration from Altman that’s pulled from various interviews, speeches and panel discussions, Altman has a cobbled together feel about it. Taking us through his early years, which he describes as "really terrible", and his rise through television (Whirlybirds and Bonanza), Mann employs a stop-start style with short anecdotes. Things do settle down when his widow Kathryn Reed Altman takes over the bulk of the storytelling (Altman’s sons help out too) and there’s fun behind the scenes footage of his prolific heyday of the seventies with M*A*S*H, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville, Thieves Like Us and The Long Goodbye (latter seventies outputs 3 Women, Quintet, Perfect Couple are briefly mentioned).
The race through the director’s career doesn’t stop though. There are no clips for his eighties films, when Altman spent most of the decade in self-imposed exile; we’re only granted posters for Streamers, Secret Honour, Fool For Love, Vincent & Theo, etc, which essentially says to the audience there’s no real need to catch these. It slows down again to examine his comeback: the TV mockumentary Tanner ’88, which he called his "best work", and 1992’s The Player (the eight minute opening tracking shot is infuriatingly fast forwarded through though). Short Cuts and Gosford Park follow and then his heart trouble.
If his filmography is zipped through, his unique style isn’t discussed in anything approaching detail either. There is a short study of his innovative sound recording technique but there’s little in the way of an exploration of his controversial, maverick, anti-Hollywood style, the closest being Jack Warner’s, "That fool has actors talking at the same time!" who fired him from 1968’s Countdown. Julianne Moore, Bruce Willis, Paul Thomas Anderson, Elliot Gould and more pop up ever-so-briefly to answer the question 'What is Altmanesque?' but the answers are soundbites.
Perfect for a newbie looking to get an introduction to Altman’s career, and insightful when it examines the director’s early career, this documentary needed more screen time to give the Altman’s work justice.
