Spotlight
Spotlight Date: 11-May-03
Spoiler Rating: High
McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
When Americans think of the men who got this country off the ground, built up its institutions and defined its character, they turn to icons whose strength, determination, good luck, or talent allowed them to overcome obstacles and make their mark --- the Ben Franklins, Lewis and Clarks, and J. P. Morgans of the world. But the history books never tell the whole story, which is one reason movies can have a positive cultural role above and beyond mere entertainment. Films like Robert Altman's western "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" serve to remind us of forgotten (and even forgettable) lives of men who also exemplify and illuminate the American experience.
The hero of this tale is John McCabe, an average fellow well suited to his particular time and place (which would be somewhere west of the Rockies in the mid-1800s). Though not brilliant, he possesses a certain shrewdness; though not charming, he understands people enough to gain some influence over them; and though not hugely ambitious, he knows what he wants and is willing to try to get it. Fortunately, the West is a raw and unrefined place where a man like him can exercise his modest powers with success. When McCabe rides into a shanty town with the unlikely name of Presbyterian Church and gets a look at the ragtag group of miners, loafers, and idealists who live there, he immediately sets up shop, importing a group of whores and erecting a brothel to house them. Admired by the townsfolk because of his entrepreneurial spirit, supply of cash, and reputation for having shot down a noted gunslinger, McCabe appears to be the master of an enviable destiny.
(Warren Beatty would not have been my first choice to play McCabe, since he's pretty and kind of goofy, but he's a good enough actor to pull it off.)
Soon after McCabe starts building, another newcomer arrives in the little town: Mrs. Constance Miller, a British prostitute who has come with the set purpose of managing McCabe's whorehouse. (Julie Christie is very well cast in this role.) Unlike McCabe, Mrs. Miller is whip smart, completely focused, and aware of the power and appeal of civilization, and it takes her only a short time to convince him that he'd be a fool not to partner with her. (She terrorizes him with questions about what to do when the ladies get their "monthlies" and, even worse, what to do when they don't.) With Mrs. Miller at the helm, McCabe's plan for a no-frills enterprise develops into a flourishing business which vitalizes the town and generates a lot of money --- and therefore catches the eye of the mining company that owns most of the land and souls in the area. When its initial, businesslike attempt to buy out the brothel is rebuffed, the company dispatches a trio of thugs to deal with McCabe in the more standard frontier manner. Hunted like an animal, McCabe is left to rely on his own resourcefulness whose time, it turns out, has expired.
The thoughts that lie behind, and emerge from, "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" are more interesting than the film itself. Altman's stark style of storytelling is both a strength and a weakness: while the movie really makes you feel like you've been plunked down in some wet, remote Old West location, it gets a little tedious watching rather unspectacular people live mostly unspectacular lives (and the would-be romance between the leads never generates much heat). But the glorious final shot of McCabe, lying dead and forgotten in the snow while the rest of the town rejoices at having saved the church from burning, brings everything together in an emotional moment of revelation. Presbyterian Church is growing, evolving from a backwater of outcasts and ruffians into a well ordered community with common aims, interests, and expectations. And McCabe is the man who, quite unintentionally, instigated the change. It was not accomplished by a grand scheme of westward expansion, or a vision of a utopian future, or a desire for power, but by his simple, selfish, dogged little hope of having money in his pocket, of being a man about town, of impressing Mrs. Miller with his authority, and of giving the people what they want (without too much thought to the morality of it). McCabe embodies the cusp between the wild, unsettled nature of the Old West and the prescribed culture of the society that grew out of it, and as such he is abandoned as soon as the transformation from one to the other has taken hold. While your typical hero represents a great leap forward, McCabe speaks to the more common but no less significant way of progress: not reaching for too much, not working too hard, using what means are available, and keeping just one step ahead of your neighbor. His life and, even more, his death make for an interesting study of America's past.
Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
