Kansas City

Robert Altman – 1996 – USA

Of the films in the last phase of Altman’s career (1992-2006), the masterpiece is arguably the first; The Player (1992), but as time goes on, it seems to me that Kansas City (1996) and Gosford Park (2001) are increasingly rising in stature.  As a matched pair of period pieces, both set in the early 1930s, they are so rich in nuance, poignancy and production design.  Altman was a rare director who could reveal the worst corruption while also commemorating the often unseen moments of pathos and nobility that people can display, and do so while constantly engaging the viewer with an entrancing, probing observational filmmaking style.  Experiencing his films is so refreshing compared to the majority of films that either lecture or assault you to the point that you feel a bit like you’re careening through a museum on a golf cart.  Altman’s work reminds us that film (with all art) is ideally meant to be contemplated, not merely caught superficially in a passing blur of extreme style and sensation.  In particular, Kansas City and Gosford Park are like mannerist paintings come to life, mosaics comprised of details and emotions, not crisp plotting.  Characters are focused on because Altman is personally interested in them, not because they are needed to mouth some crucial exposition.  Kansas City is a striking masterwork about art and politics as two worlds that frequently overlap but are ultimately indifferent to each other.  Johnny (Dermot Mulroney), a low-level hood, robs a gangster and is immediately captured by the city’s underworld king, Seldom Seen (Harry Belafonte).  Johnny’s wife, Blondie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), concocts a plan to force an important politician named Stilton into getting Johnny away from Seldom by kidnapping his wife (an amazing performance by Miranda Richardson).  Much of the action centers around Seldom’s ‘Hey Hey Club’ which is also the source of the film’s entire soundtrack, a tremendous jazz score by a functioning band comprised of many leading contemporary musicians.  Altman uses a non-linear format that is very unusual for him; alternating between Blondie’s misadventure with Mrs. Stilton and the events that led up to it.  Altman’s storylines are normally very point-A-to-point-B, and I’m not sure why he decided to go a different way here, but it works fine, even though it might’ve contributed to critics and audiences’ limited patience with the film; (they typically never loved Altman much as it was, but especially so whenever he did anything a bit more experimental).  Lastly, Kansas City might be Altman’s most autobiographical film, not that he was involved in the events portrayed, but because, as a native of Kansas City, Missouri, he was a child growing up in the same period and was acutely aware of both the potent jazz scene and the political world that produced Tom Pendergast and Harry Truman.