This movie is what I call a good movie worth watching. 3 Women by the great director Robert Altman is such a film that makes my brain agitate infinitely. I haven't seen a lot of Altman movies, only The Company and Gosford Park in recent years. I really like these two works with very different themes. In fact, as an indispensable figure in the history of American film, he has many classic works, including M*A*S*H (1970), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), and the famous Nashville (1975). The 1970s is undoubtedly his golden age, and most of the best works were born at that time. 3 Women is one of them.
When I found this disc from the library, to be honest, I didn't know much about the film itself. That's it, at the beginning, it seemed to be sucked into a huge vortex, and there was no turning back. The whole story is like a dream, a beautiful and eerie dream that is extremely real. After doing a bit of homework, I found out that Altman's original idea for the entire film was a dream he had when his wife was ill when he couldn't sleep well.
The three women in the story represent the three physiological periods in a woman's life: Pinky is a pure child who cherishes imitation and has a great thirst for being loved; Being noticed, trying to attract attention, but always being ignored and ridiculed; Willie represents mature motherhood, a thousand sails, quiet and taciturn, and has unspeakable secrets. What the film is trying to convey actually has two meanings: On the surface, Pinky in the story deliberately steals Millie's Identity, eager to be a different person. But if you think about it further, in dreams, we always escape the shackles of ourselves and play various roles at will. So these three women can also be understood as the same person, or as the roles that each other desires to play or lack. In any case, they are all part of this big dream, and no one can escape. The open ending of the film is very intriguing, and each audience can have a different understanding of it. My view is that they eventually merged into one individual, you can't live without me, and I can't live without you.
Gerald Busby made the soundtrack of the whole film, and the very haunting almost weird and bizarre melody makes people feel skin numb and creepy. It's a perfect match for the film's dreamlike, unreal atmosphere. The massive ground drawing that recurs as a large backdrop in the film is also impressive. It was a half-human, half-animal (monkey?) shape, female, with bright red sharp nails and nipples, as well as a tail and scales, and the abdomen was like a snake. It's weird, but it's weird. Unforgettable.
If there is no suitable actor to support, such an abstract play will be greatly eclipsed. But Altman always has his unique vision in casting. Movie veteran Sissy Spacek (who played Stephen King's Carrie the Witch) plays the naive Pinky, with waist-length blond hair and a freckled face shone with inquiring eyes. Although she was 28 years old at the time, her petite stature had a peculiar taste of a child and a girl. Spacek won the New York Film Critic Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in 3 Women. The most recent film she participated in was North Country, which earned Charlize Theron a second Oscar nomination this year;
Shellley Duvall was looking forward to playing the role of Milllie who spoke to herself all day long and used her overconfidence to cover up her extremely low self-esteem. She plays the wife of Jack Nickolsen who is chased by Jack Nickolsen with an axe in The Shining. Robert Altman had a discerning eye and discovered her in 1970. It's so-called luck, Duvall was selling cosmetics in a mall in Houston at the time. 3 Women can be described as the biggest highlight of Duvall's career so far, helping her win Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival. Duvall is not beautiful. The most impressive thing is her pair of very large eyes, which sometimes look extremely hollow, which makes people feel a little scary with her thin and tall figure (I always feel that she has the potential to act as a female ghost) .
Neither actress can be called beautiful, but each has an alienating and eccentric neurotic quality that makes it a perfect fit in this film.
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