The Fredösphere

We watched The Company over the weekend.  The wifeosphere liked it okay; I was mesmerized.

Since when do they let peek-a-boo nudity into PG-13 movies?  Obviously I've been living a sheltered life.

This movie is a great introduction to dance.  Those who are interested but can't see themselves staying interested throughout a two-hour live performance should really see this movie.  The dances are offered in nice, bite-sized portions with plenty of variation in the camera angles to keep our teeny-tiny attention spans amused.  Between the dances we get the faux-documentary view of the characters that populate a fictional dance company in Chicago.

Ah, the characters!  Neve Campbell played a key role in making this movie happen, but she doesn't let her character (a young dancer on the rise) take all the attention.  At the center of the action is Malcolm McDowell who plays the pompous company director.  We've seen this type of person in a Robert Altman film before.  (Maybe these people are in all the Altman films; honestly, besides The Company I've only seen The Player and Gosford Park, but my puny sample shows a 100% hit rate.)  I'm talking about the kind of person who objectifies people utterly.  These guys are all hat and no cattle, where hat is understood to mean  I-It and cattle means I-Thou. 

Altman gives us no plot, and I don't see why he's so stingy.  The movie ends with a big premiere, but there are plenty of plots and none of them receive any kind of resolution.  I just had an idea -- maybe Altman wants the dances themselves to be what sticks in our brains the next day.  Maybe he's being generous that way.  Maybe he's having an I-Thou moment after all.