TinsHeadline Touches You

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Justina The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Gooper Fortunately, all films aren't for everybody. 'Quintet' is only for a few.I saw this picture twice when it first came out, and I was practically the only one in the theatre. Why? Because it is an exploration into existential possibilities, and when you're in such territory, it's not the type of film where everything is explained, which is what audiences want these days.The problem is, existentialism (in the Sartre sense) is way out of style, if anyone even still knows what that is anymore. Today everybody wants to be cool, so 'Quintet', which is a quiet study of a very controlled situation, probably makes people squirm, and so they can just say, 'what was THAT all about??' 'Quintet' isn't cool (even though the premise is freezing to death), and it just hasn't got the appeal that even supposedly broad-minded film buffs might consider worthwhile.What I don't understand is that, if people can praise, say, Bergman for 'The Seventh Seal', why would they not give 'Quintet' a bit of consideration? Altman was plainly shooting for somewhat of a Bergmaneque question, only on a less intellectual plane: what the hell do humans do when there are fewer and fewer options available for survival? Answer: they go on anyway.'Quintet' is what it is. If nothing else, it is a fine example of adventurous film-making, pushing the limits, in the period right before the blockbuster syndrome took over, once and for all.

tieman64 In a post-apocalyptic future, in which the Earth is blanketed by snow, two travellers journey to a distant city. Once there, they discover the last remnants of humanity living a primitive existence within the battered remains of what was once a thriving plaza.After a bomb kills one of the travellers, the survivor, a seal hunter played by Paul Newman, is sucked into playing a local board game called Quintet. As the film progresses, the sinister rules of the game are slowly revealed.Shaped like a pentagon, it becomes apparent that the Quintet game board resembles the layout of the film's ruined city. Similarly, when a player is "killed" on the game board, those who did the "killing" must literally assassinate the opposing player in real life. Presiding over this deadly game is a referee who strongly resembles the film's director, Robert Altman. He exists "out of the game world" and is treated as a God/Satan figure, playing devilish games of life and death with the poor humans. Furthermore, the film links the "five sides" of its city/game to what one character calls the "five stages of life". These stages are "primum" (the pain of birth), "secundum" (the labour of maturing), "tertium" (the guilt of living), "quartum" (the terror of ageing) and "quintum" (the finality of death).Altman thus takes this simple board game and uses it as a metaphor for the hopeless lives of Earth's few remaining survivors. This is an existential tale of humans coping with the imminence of death, our seal hunter hero surviving only because he plays by his own rules.On another level, the film seems to set up numerous Biblical and religious allusions, only to purposeful knock them back down. There are references to the birth of Christ, Joseph and Mary, Satan, Jesus, God, The Passover, St Christopher, white "doves", rituals etc, which Altman playfully introduces then promptly undermines. Altman loves to deconstruct myths, whether he does so here I'm not quite sure.6/10 – An inferior rip off of Bergman and Tarkovsky's "Stalker", much of this film simply consists of people huddled around a game board or walking in the snow. Chop 40 minutes from the film and you'd have a pretty decent flick, but as it is, there's not enough material or depth here to warrant a 2 hour running time. Worth one viewing.

kjcowzlan One of the few SF films that fulfill one of my central aesthetic criteria: plunge the viewer into a world and events with minimal explanation or hand-holding. The negative reactions to "Quintet" constitute nothing more nor less than culture shock. The pace of the movie reflects the perception of time in the society it depicts. It has the feel of a real-time depiction of events in the city, a boreal Brasilia under siege from solid (frozen) water. It has the sense of progressive immobilization, of decay and entropy.NOTE: If somehow you encounter the rules for the titular game, pay attention to them. The game is *the* central plot armature for the movie, and quite ingeniously designed. You may contend that a film must make its own brief and not require additional materials to be understood. What would the filmmakers themselves have done without these materials? And it's grand fun examining the various Quintet boards in the film, seeing the rules applied and their further evolution. Metanoia may well await.Sundry random observations: I loved "Quintet"'s score, with its five-note sequences, 5/4 time, 9/8 time signatures, the percussion that recalls Taiko drumming. I loved the visual tips of the hat to the paintings of Bruegel and Bosch, with their half-hidden backgammon boards. I loved the city directory seemingly adapted from Duchamp's "Large Glass". The adjudication scene is a macabre marvel. Amazing. If you want to woo the muse of the odd (in Lafcadio Hearn's words), you could do much, much worse than "Quintet".

bkoganbing Quintet marks the only venture of both Paul Newman and director Robert Altman into the realm of science fiction. It was said of Newman that he could not do comedy, but he tried until he finally scored a real success in that genre with Slap Shot. But the failure of this film left him gun shy and he never tried it again.This is one of the biggest downer films I've ever seen. It's a futuristic ice age, brought on by who knows what, but presumably it's a nuclear winter. Even during the ice age of thousands of years ago, the equatorial parts of the earth still sustained animal and human life, but apparently not here. Seals have survived and Paul Newman is a seal hunter on the outside.But hunters do need a little R&R and Newman goes to a futuristic city where things are so boring the natives have some kind of game played with six people and it's a kind of Russian roulette. To win you have to kill five other participants in your game.It's a sad turn to see what man has come down to. Which is one of the reasons I just could not get into this story. The atmosphere is bleak, the story is bleak, the people are bleak, it's all so bleak. No wonder this thing came up short at the box office.It's a film that just about everyone thinks is never going to be on the top ten list of Paul Newman films, including me.This is man's future, what a bummer.