McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)

Robert Altman, certainly one of the great directors of all time. I heard a lot about this prior to watching it through cinephile sites and insights from other famous directors about it, and I thought for sure that I would love it. I don't really know what to say, honestly. It's one of the slowest westerns ever made. Not too much happens, and most of the dialogue is completely garbled and unintelligible due to what I think was a terrible job in the sound department, but upon research, I think that it might have been on purpose. Cinematography is quite beautiful for it's time, of course thanks to the great Vilmos Zsigmond. I appreciate what it did for the western genre, by making McCabe all talk and no action. The final shootout proves to us that he is sort of a coward. In the end, he's just a hustler, looking for love and a place to belong, but realizing nearly all of it comes at a price. After reading Roger Ebert's review of the film, I realized that the story is more or less about loneliness. McCabe and Mrs. Miller are essentially empty people, hiding under fake identities of grandeur. But they've been playing the game for so long, that even when they try to act like a couple, it fails miserably. The end of the film is extremely well done, with the close up of McCabe freezing to death in the snow, as the camera blurs out, and cutting back to Mrs. Miller getting high in the opium den. Poignant, beautiful, and perhaps indicative of the entire film itself. I don't know if I will ever watch the film again, it's quite tough to sit through, but as a fan of Altman, this is a film worth telling people that you've watched.