Snow Set Movie 5: Quintet (1979)

Paul Newman.  This is a man known for being cool.  He was Cool Hand Luke.  He was in a movie called The Towering Inferno, one of the coolest movies ever made.  He was in both The Hustler and The Color of Money.  He hasn’t only made good films though.  Everyone has a dark spot in their film career.  For Paul Newman, this includes Cars, and the next film in the Snow Set Movie Marathon, Quintet.

Quintet is directed by Robert Altman.  This man brought us movies such as MASH, Popeye, Gosford Park, and Nashville, among others.  The plot is as follows.  In the new ice age, a man and his pregnant wife are finding their way back to the city. In this city, a game called Quintet is popular. However, sometimes this game is a game of life and death.  The man and his wife stumble into the deadly game.

There was a lot of potential to be had in Quintet.  Paul Newman is the first game piece in what could have been an amazing movie.  He’s always a solid actor, from what I have seen.  I don’t think I’ve seen anything in which I haven’t liked Paul Newman.  There was the setting.  So much could have been done with the post-apocalyptic ice age setting.  The plot sounds like it could become a fun little action-thriller movie.  These pieces could all come together to make another satisfying film from Altman.  But at some point, something went wrong.

I think the problem is making the movie seem like a dream.  There is a blurry frame around the entire film.  This blurry framing is a staple of many film and television dream sequences.  The plotting of the film also seems like a dream, flowing in waves.  What do I mean by that?  Let me explain because I’m going to anyway.  The movie builds to a climax then calms down.  Then it slowly builds to another climax that is higher than the first climax then it calms down again.  After that, there is another build.  It keeps going this way until the final build reaches the final climax and the film softens itself into an ending that feels like it’s just floating you into the end.  It’s like a dream where you just feel like you float through the waves, with things becoming more real in climaxes, before floating again.

I guess I can appreciate the way that the movie was set up like that, but it led to a long time of me being bored while watching the movie because it didn’t build in the conventional way.  The other large problem was a lack of explanation that left me not knowing what was going on for the majority of the runtime.  Once I got into the final half hour of Quintet, things began to pay off and I started to enjoy the movie a little more than I did prior to that time.  Thinking back, it makes the story a little bit better when I reached the payoff.  I found it difficult to get to that point though.

It’s a tough trek through the snowy setting of Quintet but I would say that it’s worth a watch.  I don’t think I’ll ever go back to the movie again.  I do at least feel satisfied with having watched this.

I am now half way through the marathon.  Still to be watched are Dreamcatcher, The Shining, The Eiger Sanction, Touching the Void, and Frozen.  I don’t know which one is up next but I’m looking forward to continuing my voyage through the Snow Set movies.