Yet for all that the film has a complete feel to it given that underneath all the seeming freewheeling it has prerequisites of a story. Some of them resolve, some of them only start, some you don't know the beginning of. It is basically like being plopped down into middle of a collection of lives and you see various petty dramas play out. At best you can say the film follows Haweye's deployment from beginning to end-but the each episode is such just another day that much of the film can be re-ordered and the underlying plot doesn't change that much. The story is quite unconventional Altman would take this farther in later films but it doesn't really have a 3 act structure and the various plot threads are frayed and left hanging. And it makes the film the least celebratory war film in the American canon. It fits in with how the film is turning the war genre instead out. The movie is not pleasing to the eye on first pass but it has a lived-in, stressed look that just utterly fits. The use of fog filters on the cameras as well as Altman's use of zooms, and the way he clutters up the shots give the film a raw unpolished look. It looks utterly different from most films. Of all of his films I most regret not being able to see in their first run this wonderfully angry, biting and above all funny satire is at the top of the list. Unfortunately given my age I did not get to experience a lot of his films in the theaters. Altman is my favorite director of all time.
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