Rating: 

The Info

Directed by: Robert Altman
Written by: Anne Rapp
Starring: Glenn Close, Julianne Moore, Liv Tyler, Chris O'Donnell, Charles Dutton, Patricia Neal, Ned Beatty, Courtney B. Vance, Donald Moffat, Lyle Lovett
Produced by: Robert Altman

The Nutshell

An elderly woman takes her own life, causing her daughter to make it look like murder to protect the family's reputation

The Review

    Robert Altman is known for taking on powerful subjects in his work, the fashion industry (Pret-a-Porter) and the film industry (The Player), for example. So it is a welcome surprise to find him turning inward to make an intimate, enjoyable little film about a small town in Missouri named Holly Springs. It's a town where residents still believe in family honour, where you can learn all you need to know about a man simply by going fishing with him. It's also a town that has its first ever murder mystery on it's hands and we are given an omniscient view of it.

    Camille Dixon (Close) is directing Oscar Wilde's play Salome for her church, and has her hands full getting some of the town's more distinguished residents to get into their roles. She certainly doesn't have time to deal with a discovery she makes at her mother Jewel Mae "Cookie" Orcutt's house. She finds Cookie dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Believing in family pride, Camille disposes of the suicide note and calls dim sister Cora (Moore) in to help her arrange the death differently. Camille uses her expertise in drama to help her create a fictional thief who murdered Cookie, going so far as to break the backdoor window and jimmying the lock. This course of action sets off a chain of events leading to the arrest of Willis Richland (Dutton), the man who helps Cookie with things around the house, like the cleaning of her gun collection (which incriminates him through fingerprints).

    Camille refuses to tell the truth and Willis goes to the town's jail to meet with the town's lawyer (Moffat). What follows is a slow, meandering storyline that frequently strays from the murder mystery to explore the relationships between various quirky townsfolk, including Cora's daughter Emma (Tyler), the "bad girl" of the family, Jason Brown (O'Donnell), the town's greenest deputy, Manny Hood (Lovett), a fish processor who likes Emma, and Sheriff Lester Boyle (Beatty). Altman takes his time in telling his story. In a typical Hollywood murder mystery (The General's Daughter), the murder takes place before the opening title, followed by the instant introduction of the characters who will solve it. Altman places more emphasis on learning about life in Holly Springs than on the murder itself, allowing each character to have a place in the plot's greater story. This is classic Altman, with characters from earlier films like Nashville and Short Cuts having similar importance.

    As usual for an Altman film, the cast is large and intelligently cast. Glenn Close is wonderful as Camille Dixon. Camille is an incredibly complex woman, who on one hand is able to alter the death scene of her own mother, and on the other hand prays to God to find the man who killed her, fully convincing herself that it was not a suicide. Ned Beatty doesn't have much more to do than talk about fishing as the sheriff, but he is able to convey Altman's vision of life in Holly Springs to us, along with Charles S. Dutton, who gives a quiet, understated performance as Willis. Altman uses Willis to let the town's beliefs about the way life works emerge. Willis often steals a bottle of Wild Turkey from the town's bar. The bar's employees are aware of this, yet do nothing, knowing he always returns with a new bottle when he gets paid. There is a clever scene in the bar where an out-of-town prosecutor (Vance) tries hard to understand how a bar can let a man steal so often without doing anything, highlighting the difficulty of city dwellers to grasp the way of life in small-town America.

    Viewers used to the fast pace of usual Hollywood films may find themselves tapping their fingers on the armrest here, as Altman's wonderful film takes it time in telling its amusing little story. It is nice to be reminded that sometimes, its the little things, not the main plot, that make a film fun. Too many films today rush to get us to the next joke, or the next explosion, as quickly as possible. Robert Altman is one of America's best storytellers, and Cookie's Fortune is a welcome addition to his impressive filmography.

Copyright - Tim Chandler

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