Review
THE COMPANY
Starring Neve Campbell, James Franco and Malcolm McDowell
Directed by Robert Altman
Opens Friday, March 26
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At their most rudimentary levels, both film and dance share a similar reliance on the choreography of movement with sound (most often music). The primary difference is, quite obviously, that live dance performance takes place in three dimensions, whereas film does not. But when it comes to capturing dance on film, perhaps the greatest challenge lies in figuring out how to evoke a 3-D art form in a 2-D medium.
Given that his typical cinematic style is not particularly kinetic, it’s no surprise that director Robert Altman stumbles on this obstacle with The Company. Through his esteemed career, from M.A.S.H. and Nashville to The Player, Short Cuts and Gosford Park, Altman has been celebrated for long takes and lumbering Steadicam shots that capture entire milieus, as well as the numerous fascinating characters who pass through them. Using the same technique in The Company, produced by and starring Neve Campbell, Altman brings the backstage world of a big urban dance company– in this case, Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet – to life. But the film’s dance sequences, of which there are a great many, are sluggish, adding very little to either the story or its characterization.
Interestingly, the film’s love story – between Campbell’s ingénue and her cuddly boy toy Josh (James Franco) – progresses like a pas de deux to the tune of "My Funny Valentine." Yet, when it comes to the ballet itself, neither camera movement nor the pace of the editing are employed particularly effectively. Instead, we see a lot of long, lingering shots of the entire stage, and on the rare occasions when the camera gets in close enough to the dancers to capture their expressions, body parts are inevitably lopped off (bringing to mind Fritz Lang’s old maxim, delivered in Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt, that Cinemascope is "only good for snakes and funerals").
This, in turn, means that the dance sequences seem like incidental interludes in a film that doesn’t have much narrative framework to begin with.
That lack of that framework is typical of Altman – a director who is accustomed to having his work labelled "impressionistic" – and, offstage, he brilliantly traipses through the cutthroat environment of a large dance company in which everyone is working together, but where egos nevertheless get completely out of control. Malcolm McDowell is most memorable as the company’s bitchy artistic director, and there are a couple of other actors who manage to make their characters distinguishable from the rest. But the film is plagued by the same problem encountered by the fictional company it portrays – an unfortunate egocentrism on the part of its star, who, in this form, doesn’t shine very brightly at the best of times.
Given that The Company is focused more on Campbell’s young upstart than her place in "the company," the film’s title is a misnomer. Thus, what might have become another Altman classic is instead locked in a badly choreographed pas de deux, trying to straddle the extremes of "ensemble piece" and "star vehicle." Regrettably, the two don’t move together particularly gracefully. |
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