ejonconrad
I had never heard of this movie until I saw it in an "obscure sci-fi" list. That was surprising, because it sounded like it was right in my wheel house. I love 70s post-apocalyptic sci-fi, I love Paul Newman, and I love Robert Altman movies.For the record, I loved Zardoz, which is generally regarded as another high-concept misfire, so I had hopes I would like this one in spite of the suspiciously low Rotten Tomatoes score.Unfortunately, RT was right. This was just boring and terrible. Basically, an ice age has enveloped the Earth and everyone passes their time playing a game called Quintet - and people get killed over it. That's it; that's the plot.The whole thing had the feel of a pilot for a TV show that was never picked up. You know, like maybe in the next episode, something interesting would happen. There definitely wasn't enough there to stand on its own.On top of everything else, it takes itself really seriously, so it even fails in the "so bad it's good" category".I can't recommend watching this movie for any reason whatsoever.
Edgar Soberon Torchia
When Robert Altman's relations with 20th Century-Fox were increasingly worsening, he made "Quintet" and "HealtH", sold his production company Lion's Gate, and started shooting Jules Feiffer's script of "Popeye" for Disney and Paramount, a move that in a way signaled a rupture with his previous cinema, centered on the survey of American institutions and film genres. "Quintet" is a cryptic, enigmatic science-fiction drama that takes place in a decimated, permanently cold world. A hunter (Paul Newman) and his pregnant wife (Brigitte Fossey) arrive to the only community of human survivors. The woman is killed —eliminating the possibility of new life— and the hunter participates in a game called quintet, associated (as it has been said somewhere else) with five stages of life: the pain of birth, the strain of maturation, the guilt of existence, the terror of aging, and the finality of death. Altman himself invented the game (which I never understood, to tell the truth, but I could not care less), and the player that loses must die in real life, as the hunter, who has to fight for his life. Photographed by Jean Boffety with a permanent filter that diffuses the corners of the frame, and shot almost entirely inside the abandoned installations of Expo 67 in Montréal (except for the opening and ending, photographed in frozen exteriors), duplicating the feeling of loss and ruin, while the wardrobe adds the sensation of timelessness and worldliness, "Quintet" is a nihilistic vision of the world that some see as the third film of a surrealist trilogy, also conformed by Altman's "Images" and "3 Women". Besides American Newman and French Fossey, the international cast includes Spaniard Fernando Rey, Italian Vittorio Gassmann, Swedish Bibi Andersson, and Danish Nina Van Pallandt. An attractive cinematic experience, it is science fiction "a la Altman", who was not precisely a master of all genres, but a filmmaker who liked to revise them and come out with something else, usually interesting.
kjcowzlan
One of the few SF films that fulfill one of my central aesthetic criteria: plunge the viewer into a world and events with minimal explanation or hand-holding. The negative reactions to "Quintet" constitute nothing more nor less than culture shock. The pace of the movie reflects the perception of time in the society it depicts. It has the feel of a real-time depiction of events in the city, a boreal Brasilia under siege from solid (frozen) water. It has the sense of progressive immobilization, of decay and entropy.NOTE: If somehow you encounter the rules for the titular game, pay attention to them. The game is *the* central plot armature for the movie, and quite ingeniously designed. You may contend that a film must make its own brief and not require additional materials to be understood. What would the filmmakers themselves have done without these materials? And it's grand fun examining the various Quintet boards in the film, seeing the rules applied and their further evolution. Metanoia may well await.Sundry random observations: I loved "Quintet"'s score, with its five-note sequences, 5/4 time, 9/8 time signatures, the percussion that recalls Taiko drumming. I loved the visual tips of the hat to the paintings of Bruegel and Bosch, with their half-hidden backgammon boards. I loved the city directory seemingly adapted from Duchamp's "Large Glass". The adjudication scene is a macabre marvel. Amazing. If you want to woo the muse of the odd (in Lafcadio Hearn's words), you could do much, much worse than "Quintet".
capitainehaddock
This is one of the many very good performances by Paul Newman, who was always underrated as an actor because of his all-encompassing beauty. The main problem with this movie, in my opinion, is the huge Vaseline budget they had. The whole movie was shot with Vaseline at the edges of the lens. I find that very annoying. When I make the effort to remember not to be annoyed by that "Vaseline experiment", I find it is not a bad movie by a long shot. The cast is brilliant, the futuristic plot is innovative for the period and the decor is intriguingly apt. The smearing of Vaseline on the lens applied to a whole movie may have been innovative, it was certainly daring, but I, for one, like to be able to look at the part of the screen I choose, and not be forbidden to have a clear look at the edges. CH
AD
