Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Susannah York's Finest Hour, 23 Mar 2005
Susannah York stars in one of Robert Altman's best films. She plays Cathryn, a novelist who is writing a children's book on Unicorns. She goes with her photographer husband to a country cottage in the Wicklow Mountains of Ireland for a holiday. There her already fragile mind begins to see images of people she and we the viewers aren't certain whether they're real or not. It's a film about the descent into horrific madness played by an actress at the very top of her form. The camera work is superb and the music by Stomu Yamashta hits you with its startling originality.The DVD also contains, along with the obligatory trailer, a quite excellent selection of scenes from the film that Robert Altman comments on from his own perspective as the director.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
What a mystery..., 23 April 2007
Robert Altman's "Images" is a powerful and bewildering film. It's ability to throw the viewer completely numerous times throughout it's running time is something I have seldom encountered before while watching a psychological thriller. You'll need to have all your wits about you to appreciate what you see here.
The plot, as written on paper, is not complicated. Susannah York plays Cathryn, a married woman who seems rather highly strung and nervous. Together with her husband she goes to a remote house in the country to write a children's book. Once there, she gradually begins to lose her grip on reality. That's all I can really be sure about, because the viewer lives Cathryn's experience as fully as the character does. Throughout the movie, events happen that can't possibly be explained as rational or real, and the only possible explanation is that Cathryn is hallucinating. A film that does this without ever making it clear whether the audience it supposed to be able to work out what is reality and what is a dream, is audacious indeed. I watched, baffled, as Cathryn encountered various people who may or may not have actually been there, saw her own double moving around the landscape, received mocking telephone calls, and had whole conversations with someone in the room who then suddenly became someone else. It took the first 30 minutes of watching to become accustomed to how slickly the film tosses you between the various states of reality and unreality. Once I loosened up and started to just go with it, it was easier...oddly enough, I was mirroring the emotions of the main character, as she too realises that if she can't shake the nightmare off, she's going to have to just deal with it...watch the movie to see how she does!
Although disorientating, thanks to the overall quality of the film, it becomes a fairly gripping experience to actually watch. You really never know what is going to happen next, or what thing Cathryn has just experienced is going to turn out to have been imagined. And not in some corny, cliche-d way like a friend saying "But so-and-so couldn't have just been here - he died two weeks ago!". It's all much more subtle than that. As films that tamper with your perception of what is reality and what is not go, there are few other works that can rival this. It's been compared to Polanski's "Repulsion", and I think the comparison is fair, but "Images" manages to be an even more immersive experience than that film. Susannah York never hits a false note as the troubled Cathryn, and all the other actors do well, acting naturally and understatedly, especially Cathryn Harrison as the teenage daughter of one of the (few) other characters.
By the time the credits roll, you may feel terminally confused, speechless, or even cheated, but there's no doubt in my mind that you'll remember it as a fascinating 95 minute experience. This film is a significant contribution to the cinema as a whole, and quite a remarkable acheivement.
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