Word: quintets
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...QUINTET Directed by Robert Altman Screenplay by Frank Barhydt, Robert Altman and Patricia Resnick...
...frozen, nameless city mumbling about the Apocalypse. Packs of vicious dogs appear in scene after snowy scene to gnaw on abandoned human corpses. The number five turns up everywhere: people wear five-sided hats, speak of a five-sided universe and play a five-sided board game called Quintet. What is going on? Is that rascal Altman trying to bring back the new math...
About halfway through the movie, one begins to wish he were. The point of Quintet, it becomes painfully clear, is not nearly so obscure or weighty or downbeat as the director would have us believe. Altman is coming out foursquare in favor of life over death, love over hate, free will over fate. Though such optimistic feelings are admirable, there is no legitimate reason to cloak them in the arty mannerisms of yesteryear's avantgarde. Quintet has more highfalutin dialogue, pregnant pauses and overbearing symbols than the collected works of Maxwell Anderson; it has roughly as much content...
...film's story, once it can be deciphered, is even more tired than its ideas. Quintet is built around a vintage sci-fi gambit that only a few years ago turned up in an execrable action movie, Roller ball. Here again, we are in the midst of a futuristic society that worships a deadly game with indecipherable rules. Quintet appears to be a shotgun marriage between backgammon and Russian roulette. The hero (Paul Newman instead of James Caan) is trying to beat the game before he becomes its bloodied victim. Yet the plot is so familiar that the audience...
...undefeated racquetwomen must capture the Cup if they hope to take the collegiate title. Junior Becky Tung, recently recovered from a knee injury, will play in the top slot. Freshman Cynthia Stanton, playing manager Nell Foreman, undefeated Courtney Stimpson and captain Jenny Stone round out Harvard's quintet of A players...