"It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching to the sky to just to surrender." – Leonard Cohen, "The Stranger Song" from McCabe & Mrs. Miller.
Although Robert Altman's film is often thought of as a deconstructed Western, to me, it seemed more like a fantasy or science fiction film. It creates a world completley unto itself, that seems to exist outside of time and history. The small town of Presbyterian Chuch-probably in Montana or Washington state, is one of the most distinctive and memorable locatins in all of cinema, and one of the most depressing. Although the title refers to two of its characters, the movie seems to be told from the point of veiw of God- looking down on a town of miserable sinners.
Presbyterian Chruch is a mining town that consists almost entirely of men, who are not particularly cultured, or inellient, or ethical for that matter. They want entertainment, and traveling businessman John McCabe (Warren Beatty) thinks he can provide it for them, in the form of a brothel, which the men enthusiacticly support. He is surprised when a British madam, Constance Miller, (Julie Christie) enters town as well, and states that he is going about things all wrong- the men should have high class prostitues in comforatble surroundings. The two become business partners and Mrs. Miller is proved correct, as cash pours in.
The fact that the prostitutes are not that much better looking than their customers helps to illustrate that the movie is not so much about sex, but about lifelessness. The men have few forms of entertainment aside from gambling, eating, and having sex. In the entire film, no character, male or female, has a meaningful relationship with another human. It's all about getting just enough to pleasure to make the day bareable.
All of this is depressing, but not so much that the movie becomes repulsive. Altman has stated that he has conciounessly avoided formal beauty in the photography of his films, but this is one of the most beautiful I've ever seen, which makes the characters sad lives more meloncholy. It is like nature is too perfect for any human to inhabit this area- they are commiting sacrilidge on sacred ground.
Warren Beatty turns in the best performance of his career as McCabe, who reminds me of Charles Foster Kane and Michael Corleone- they all could have been great men, but something went deeply wrong, and they became great at digging holes where they eventually burried themselves.
Where this often brillant film goes wrong is when it tries to begin a conventional plot, involing disreputable businessman who want to buy the brothel from McCabe. The movie looses its transcendence when it tries to make an intellectual argument- it becomes another 70's parable about the dark side of the American dream, with the prototypical ending of the period, which you can guess if you have seen enough 70's movies. I liked it when it was just a compelling portrait of a cold place, in every sense of the word, and the people who lived there, ignorant, mean, greedy and miserable, perhaps so sad they don't even realize it.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)