Altman + Stage = Brilliant

There have been plenty of great films based on stage plays.  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Dog Day Afternoon, A Thousand Clowns, and Wait Until Dark are all great examples.  Robert Altman, a film director who grew largely out of the DIY, anti-establishment, pictures of the 70s has made numerous films based on the stage, but recently I had the good fortune to watch a restored print of his 1982 film adaptation of Come Back To The 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, a film rife with the crucible nature of a one location stage play, utilizing amazing cinematographic tricks to cut together flashback sequences between a 20 year time span.

The film is about a 20 year reunion of a small town James Dean fan club at their meeting place, the local 5 & Dime.  Or so is the premise, but what occurs is an evening of both heartening and tragic revelation sparking a commentary on small town prejudice and close minded obsession.

Sandy Dennis takes up the lead as Mona, a girl who's life long obsession with James Dean has warped her sense of reality, and she plays it was a nervous intensity that both grips and repels the viewer.  Cher, in her comeback performance, is Sissy, a promiscuous girl who seeks validation in all of the wrong places.  Both girls are incredible, but the knockout performance is Karen Black, who, I can't really tell too much about without giving away an important twist in the whole story.  Let me just say that she is the moral compass of the story, the only character who has an absolutely clear motive and desire.

The film sparks questions about morality, truthfulness, and the nature of obsession.  Mona, is so protective of her son and her fantasy that rather than letting him live like a normal child, she keeps him cooped up in the 5 & Dime, projecting her own handicap upon him.  It brought to mind the actual treatment of the mentally disabled, which hasn't improved all that much since the 80s.  I say this, of course, in how we approach those with mental handicaps.  There is a stigma, the same as there is toward other groups that are not part of the homogeneous white bred American of the line following the Mississippi.  A stigma, that one would assume, would be overcome with progress brought by technology, education, and plain 'ol evolution.  

All of this is tied together by the increasingly ambiguous morality, that is not quite shared by all of the protagonists.  Some of these women think of themselves as forward thinkers trapped in an oppressive community, but what do they do to escape this community?  Everyone has an idea of what it means to be happy, but none of these women seem truly happy.  Perhaps happiness can only be derived upon the confrontation of one's own faults and the tearing down of the walls we place around ourselves.  At least, that's what it feels like Altman is telling us.

Altman followed this film with Streamers, easily available on netflix.com instant video and also based on a stage play, about homo-eroticism, racism, and the dreaded 'Section 8', in a Vietnam-Era Bootcamp.  Other stage based films would follow; Secret Honor and Beyond Therapy to name a few, but Come Back To The 5 & Dime was a benchmark for Altman.  He proved that he still had IT, as he would prove again in his late career a few more times.

Custom Trailer Found on Youtube.  No Trailer