Essex (Paul Newman) and his pregnant lover travel across the frozen wastes to an ancient city where he hopes to find work. Instead, she is murdered, along with Essexâs brother. Essex seeks out the murderers, and tries to determine how the killings tie into the game Quintet, which the inhabitants of the ice-covered city play fanatically.
Listen as I blow your mind:
Whiteness. Bleakness. The human soul is but a minute ice crystal in the vastness of the snowscape which is the never ending void of existence. It is layered within the slush of the psyche of the cold reality of humanity.
Is it blown? If so, youâre going to love Quintet, a movie which asks the question, is there a limit to how pompous a film can be? Director and âauteurâ Robert Altman, who has never met a long period of silence he didnât like, is completely at home with this soul withering excursion into pretension.
Itâs not surprising that a movie this overblown is also obscure. For nine-tenths of the film, itâs impossible to figure out what is going on. It doesnât help that the picture is indistinct, with a blurry frame surrounding the picture. Penthouse photo shoots use less Vaseline on the camera lens. The film introduces us to an ice-encrusted, dying city of the future, with no comment on how it works, or giving any real idea of what is happening in it. Dogs outnumber people, and eat the dead who are left where they fall. Everyone plays a game, but weâre given no idea what the rules are. Some people have jobs, but most donât, and no explanation is given as to how anyone survives. People wander into rooms, make vague statements about the “sixth man” or the “sixth side,” and then off they go. No, that sentence implies something happens quickly. Before anyone goes off anywhere, there are five or six long pauses and a few close-ups accompanied by dramatic music. Itâs as if Altman watched Zardoz and said, âThat flying head and those immortals in tuxes make far too much sense. I can make a film that will be completely impenetrable to everyone.â Itâs hard to imagine what other motivation he had for making the film.
And after all the pseudo-intellectual rhetoric and unexplained antics, it all turns into the simplest story imaginable. In the last five minutes, I realized that this is really a ten minute short, surrounded by meaningless babbling.
Quintet is a movie with a lot of ice, and thatâs about it.