Brewster McCloud

26 January 2014:

Brewster McCloud

This has been on my list of top ten films since I first saw it 40+ years ago. It withholds at lot from the initial viewing and you discover something new each time you watch it.

Given its 1970 release, it is unique in not having any contemporary music in the soundtrack. Instead Altman limited the songs to "The Star Spangled Banner" (crediting Francis Scott Key in the title sequence), Lift Every Voice and Sing (Black National Hymn), and several original songs written and performed for the film by John Phillips.

The film has references to other films, Altman's own work, and other places. Altman refers to Bullitt (1969) by including a character named Frank Shaft, who is a detective from San Francisco. The name may have inspired the name of Richard Roundtree's "John Shaft" character, in a more subtle parody from 1971 ("he just took my man Leroy and threw him out the God damn window").

Homages to The Wizard of Oz (1939) have been noted in the film, as Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch of the West, is the music conductor seen during the opening credits. She is seen wearing ruby slippers in the film. Hope (Jennifer Salt) who supplies Brewster with health food, resembles Dorothy, as she wears a distinctive gingham dress, has pigtails and carries a basket. At the end of the film, she is shown in the cast as Dorothy carrying Toto.

Shelley Duvall (below) plays a Raggedy Ann airhead character (without Luna Lovegood's redeeming qualities) and actually appears as a Raggedy Ann clown in the final scene.

I recall taking a film course at Cornell's Adult University in the summer of 2002, I would help to teach a video editing course there in 2007. The CAU professor in 2002 was so bad that on several afternoons I actually skipped his class and attended a "Geology of the Finger Lakes" class that was being held in one of the engineering buildings. I had brought along a copy of "Brewster McCloud" but he refused to play any of it for the class, even though it illustrated several of his main points far better than the examples he had chosen. He had been unaware of the existence of the film until I brought it and perhaps felt threatened by a student (even an adult one) knowing more about the subject he was teaching. Or maybe not.

"Brewster McCloud" (late 1970) is a film that presents society as circus performers and life as a circus, if you haven't figured that out by the end Altman hits you over the head with it as he goes out with perhaps the best black comedy ending of all time. Throughout the story a bird-like narrator, sometimes on camera and sometimes in a voiceover commentary, discusses the traits of various birds; traits that are shared by the human characters in the story although that leap is left to each viewer. Allusions to birds are found throughout the story, from the orange Plymouth Roadrunner to the names of several assisted living facilities.

The title character (played by Bud Cort) is much the same naive Private Boone character Cort portrayed for Altman in "MASH". The difference is that Brewster is on an ambitious quest to literally fly. Which involves intensive physical training when he is not busy designing and building a set of Wright Brothers inspired wings.

During the course of his project Brewster has to be rescued several times and stay focused on his goal of flying. In this he is assisted by personifications of Faith (Sally Kellerman) and Hope (Jennifer Salt). Kellerman's character is actually named Louise and functions as his guardian angel, although if Hope is Oz's Dorothy then Louise is Oz's Glinda.

"Hope" is conceptually what self-pleasuring is all about and she demonstrates this when thinking about Brewster. Freud's dream of flying as symbolic of the sexual urge is explained to Brewster by Louise and at first glance Brewster's loss of virginity and its attendant loss of idealism is what dooms him. But I see it being more about the loss of his humility. And it is his new found arrogance that drives away his Faith. She exits by the Astrodome's huge commercial gate which slowly closes after her exit, trapping Brewster inside the structure. He can utilize his wings in what is essentially a large bird cage but he cannot escape. The dome representing the constraints and limitations of society and outside the dome representing freedom. One assumes that had he not driven her away that Louise would have assisted him in leaving the dome. There is a bit of "The Incredible Shrinking Man" in this idea of needing to become infinitesimal in order to merge with the infinite.

Given that most of the cast were Altman regulars, it is remarkable how successful he was with his physical casting. Duvall, for example, has not just the physical rag doll look (note the Raggedy Ann wallpaper in her apartment and the emphasis given to her huge eyes) but her most striking feature is her thinness - a physical manifestation of her character's most striking feature - shallowness.

It is a nicely layered film that works well simply as a social satire of American values and conventions. Many of these details will escape the notice of the first time viewer, such as in the scene of Patrolman Johnson's family at dinner. He has three sets of twin sons gathered around the dinner table in their Little League uniforms, the smallest two playing for a team named "WASPS".

In the end the circus audience watches in satisfied fascination as yet another high flyer overreaches and falls back to earth. The "Greatest Show On Earth" presided over by controlling ringmaster Haskell Weeks (William Windom), perhaps a nod to cinematographer Haskell Wexler with whom Altman hoped to one day collaborate.