A
psychological study which often takes on the feeling of a nightmare,
Images has the tension
and brooding atmosphere of a horror film, although it is not one in
the conventional sense. It could be described as sort of a midpoint
between Repulsion and
Let's Scare Jessica to Death,
although without the former's outright surrealism or the latter's
horror plot tropes, and with a healthy dose of Persona
mixed in. It is an examination of a woman slowly going insane, packed
with eerie and mysterious images of a seemingly-idyllic rural
environment twisted into a place of dread. Susannah York stars as
Cathryn, an author of surreal, Fantastic Planet-esque
children's fantasy books, who is slowly losing her mind to
schizophrenia. Reality keeps shifting within her mind as she is
tormented by a doppelganger of herself, and as she juggles toxic,
mistrusting relationships with three current or former lovers
(principally her possibly-unfaithful husband, Altman regular Rene
Auberjonois) – at least one of whom isn't really there. The
carefully-crafted dreaminess of the film keeps the viewer perpetually
off-balance: the perspective constantly shifts from reality to
Cathryn's fractured visions, so that we never know what is real and
what is imagined, and even the more ostensibly realistic parts of the
film (right down to the unspecified setting) are handled in such a
way that they never feel quite anchored in the real world. Altman
puts us in Cathryn's head extremely effectively, and as a result the
viewer, like the protagonist, remains disoriented throughout, trying
to keep their head above water and make sense of the kaleidoscopic
puzzle.
This approach is both the film's greatest strength, and the thing that makes it so inaccessible to most viewers; not everyone is going to like feeling as disoriented and unmoored from reality as this film makes you feel, especially in the absence of a clear, conventional narrative. The film was heavily improvised, or at least developed in workshops and rehearsals with the cast, and refractions of the actors themselves were worked into the film to accentuate the feeling of reality filtered through a mad mind. Each character has the name of another one of the actors (Susannah York plays Cathryn, Cathryn Harrison plays Susannah; Rene Auberjonois plays Hugh, Hugh Millais plays Marcel, Marcel Bozzuffi plays Rene), the surreal children's book that Cathryn is writing is an actual book that York was writing at the time, and York's real-life pregnancy was used to visualize Cathryn's anxieties about getting pregnant. The film also has very thick symbolism which is obvious in terms of its recurring visual motifs – lots of wind-chimes, cameras and lenses, reflections, and jigsaw puzzles – but a good deal less obvious and more open to interpretation in what they each mean to the narrative and characters. In a sense, these elements appear as recurring images in a dream would; they clearly have psychological significance to Cathryn, but exactly what that significance is requires some psychoanalysis and interpretation on the part of the viewer.
These
visual motifs are just one way in which Altman's film is visually
rich and fantastically stylized, thanks largely to Vilmos Zsigmond's
characteristically stellar cinematography. The motifs appear in ways
both subtle and obvious, but are always striking. Zsigmond's
camerawork frequently moves across that line between real and
imagined, taking us out of the rational world and inside Cathryn's
mind sometimes within a single camera move. The camerawork also makes
gorgeous use of the ethereal, fog-draped Irish landscape which
provides the film's main setting: Altman and Zsigmond love getting
massively wide landscape shots in which the actors are tiny figures
in a corner of the frame, dwarfed by the world around them and the
mystery that it represents. These visuals are matched by the highly
unique and impressionistic soundtrack by John Williams and Japanese
experimental percussionist Stomu Yamash'ta, which rattles with
sudden, unexpected bursts of noise as fractured and insane as the
perspective of the film itself. Particularly given that Williams is
most famous conventionally sweeping and epic film scores like Star
Wars and Harry Potter,
the abstract, experimental quality of this score is as surprising as
it is excellent.
Given
what a visually and aurally rich film Images is,
it is perhaps just as well that it never had to endure a pan-n-scan
VHS release in America; its 2.35:1 cinematography is essential, and
it is fortunate that both of its home video editions preserved that,
even if it is unfortunate that such an interesting film has only ever
gotten two home video editions. Arrow's 4k restoration of the film
looks beautiful; a significant step up over the good for the time,
but now rather dated 2003 MGM transfer. The film's soundtrack retains
its original mono mix, but sounds great, with the Williams/Yamash'ta
music shining through brilliantly. As always, Arrow has assembled an
impressive array of extras, with the newly-produced content including
an interview with the child actress who played one of the supporting
roles, a half-hour analysis/appreciation of the film by author
Stephen Thrower, and a commentary by film scholars and frequent Arrow
contributors Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan from Diabolique magazine.
The interview with the actress provides some wonderful insights into
Altman's highly collaborative creative process, and the commentary
and analysis provide some invaluable background on the film, its
style, its place in Altman's filmography, and its place in the
various genres in which it dabbles. But honestly, the most valuable
and interesting extras are the ones ported over from that 2003 MGM
DVD. In the early-2000s MGM was notorious for putting out cheap
bare-bones discs and skimping on extras, but thankfully they didn't
do that with Images;
instead they produced a very enlightening featurette based around
thorough interviews with Robert Altman and Vilmos Zsigmond, and a
scene-specific commentary with Altman in which he analyzes just over
half an hour's worth of scenes from the movie with quite a bit of
depth and detail. These extras are absolutely priceless, since both
men are now deceased (Altman died just three years after that DVD was
produced), and given what a long-neglected film Images is,
it seems like a minor miracle that a major distributor like MGM cared
enough to document their thoughts on the film while they were still
living.
Score:
-
Christopher S. Jordan
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