Realistic Fiction

Realism in Film -- Altman's vision of a wild and amoral West: "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" The Western is often the most unrealistic and schematic of film genres in its plot and use of stock characters The film "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," as directed by Robert Altman, shows how this traditional genre of American film also has the potential, within its structure, create a sense of realism. Altman's direction invests the West with a sense of local color, multidimensional characters, and serious moral dilemmas.

The muddy setting immediately shows the viewer that he or she will not be witnessing a vision of the American West that is filled with white-hat wearing cowboys shod in gleaming boots -- this is a West where men and women must sweat and toil simply to live. Altman's photography avoids wide, panoramic shots of the main protagonists and instead focuses on close-ups of their unadorned faces.

Even the musical score is not lush orchestral, and sweeping in its tone, but more akin to the actual acoustic music of the period. True, it is from the era of the film's production, 1971, but it has rough, sorrowful aural texture to it. It expresses the loneliness of the main character, McCabe. Both main characters are lonely; yet find a point of common connection because of their shared economic interests and wit. The cinematic dialogue between McCabe and the brothel owner Mrs.

Miller, lacks the canned moral qualities of usual Westerns, but has a terse wit and bite to it that 'feels' real, even though the characters may be more eloquent than the hustlers and whores they are based upon from Western historical reality. But perhaps the most centrally 'realistic' aspect to the film is the predominance of money in the hearts of the protagonists, as opposed to the antagonists, as is traditional in the Western genre.

McCabe is a gambler who attempts to establish control over his financial means of making a living. Mrs. Miller was formerly a prostitute and now uses the bodies of other women to make her money. The ethical dilemma McCabe faces is not the traditional moral qualms of a good-hearted defender of female virtue. The women of the film have no virtue to lose, and Mrs. Miller prefers using drugs to using her body for pleasure. Rather the main ethical dilemma the protagonist faces is economic and personal.

Should McCabe allow himself to be bought out by the mining company who wishes to cast his saloon and gambling house out of the area? Should he risk his life for the sake of personal, material gain and attempt to build upon Mrs. Miller's enterprise and his own? McCabe makes use of prostitution as a financial lure for gamblers, using the bodies of women for financial gain but the film sees him as superior to those who would kill him with bounty hunter rather than see him make money. Mrs.

Miller may be a whore with a heart of gold, in the traditional stereotypical lines the Western favors, but she is also a savvy businesswoman who chooses her lot in life to a great degree, and an addict who is unrepentant, calcified in a soul that is beyond repair to the cares of the world. Only through capitalism and individualism is she cable of any connection with an individual like McCabe. Yet, the film does have the qualities of popular mythology in its depiction of the American West.

"I have poetry in me,".