So I finally, finally watched McCabe and Mrs. Miller over the weekend. I thought it was beautiful. Strangely for a movie I’ve been hearing about almost all my life, it struck me as an entirely new thing in the world–I realized nearly as soon as it started that I’d never seen so much as a scene or a still from it. That’s odd, isn’t it?
Some plot points, I think, escaped me. Didn’t bother me much. What will stay with me is the killer combination of those achingly lovely vistas (was ever a film better served by letterboxing?) and the Leonard Cohen soundtrack, so anachronistic and yet so fitting. Why “achingly” lovely? Because as the characters go about their work against these gorgeous backdrops, you realize, first, that the beauty is ordinary to them and, second, that their work is the beginning of the process of deleting it.
I still like The Long Goodbye best among Altmans–no contest–and California Split second. But I think there’s a place after that for McCabe.