Fernando Rey states at the conclusion of "Quintet" that "life can only be felt when death is near." It can be said with certainty that this film engenders one to wholly realize the infallibility of this proclamation.However, the star of Quintet is Paul Newman. He plays a man named Essex living in a post-apocalyptic ice age world. Returning to what is seemingly one of the last areas of abundant concentration of human life, Essex finds mankind singularly concerned with a game; quintet. A game to which the rules are never seriously attempted to be made clear nor one in which it's meaning to the characters could ever be understood. As the game went so did the film.Vincent Canby may have said it best, "All great directors must be arrogant to the extent that they will follow their dreams through to the bitter, sometimes banal end." When considering Quintet was written, directed and produced by Robert Altman, Canby's statement is undoubtedly assured.The banality is felt increasingly with every coming scene. It is felt through the frigid performance of Paul Newman, who comes across more as a depressed introverted Han Solo. They're many scenes that only cause utter confusion. In fact, the scenes without dialog are a bit more stimulating than those of interaction. Quintet is not a film for recommended viewing. Yet, if you are unable to resist the aura Newman and Altman, beware of frostbite.

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.

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".

The best thing I can say about "Quintet" is that it's not quite as bad as I remembered it being on my first viewing.But that doesn't mean it's good.This weird, sci-fi thriller is not quite like any other movie I've ever seen, which I guess at least gives it the stamp of novelty. But it's a borderline disaster of a movie, and one of the worst Robert Altman ever made. On the DVD special feature about the making of "Quintet," it's clear that even Altman didn't know what the hell the movie was supposed to be.It's set in some distant future when the world is in the grip of another ice age. The film was shot at the abandoned site of the Montreal Expo '67, and I do have to admit that this gives the movie some interesting production design elements, even if much of it looks like it's being filmed in an iced-over shopping mall. Paul Newman, looking zonked out and absolutely disinterested in anything going on around him, and Brigitte Fossey, play drifters who wander into this futuristic city looking for Newman's brother. Soon Newman is caught up in a deadly game of "Quintet," which all of the bored inhabitants play for lack of anything better to do, and the rules of which are never made clear to the audience. All we know is that the object of the game it to kill everyone else you're playing with and remain the only person alive. This gives these nihilistic inhabitants their only thrill, because as one of them says at one point in a psychobabblish soliloquy, only by being near to death can one appreciate being alive.The movie is slow, ugly and actually uncomfortable to watch due to its unrelenting gloominess. It's almost as if Altman was purposely setting out to make a movie no one would want to sit through. There aren't characters -- oh sure, actors walk around speaking lines, but none of the lines really means much and the impressive list of international actors Altman assembled for this register not a whit. Only Bibi Andersson gives the closest thing to a memorable performance as could possibly be found in a movie like this. But nevertheless, it does succeed in establishing an atmosphere, even if that atmosphere is one of pure awfulness, and it is oddly fascinating in the way that watching a man slowly starve himself to death would be fascinating.Altman really hit a dry spell after nearly a decade of superb films. "Quintet" followed close on the heels of the atrocious "A Wedding" and was followed in short order by the not bad but mostly forgettable "A Perfect Couple," the by-all-accounts terrible "Health" (which I've never seen because it's not available anywhere TO see) and the disastrous "Popeye." Thank God he rebounded.Grade: D-