The Player: an academic reading

Robert Altman’s film The Player shows the inside dealings of Hollywood- what goes on behind the camera. Altman’s film is very ironic in that it really makes fun of the Hollywood system, while being a product of it. Altman teases the idea of having big stars in movies, only to get many famous stars to cameo as themselves in this 1992 film. It is a movie about movies, in short. Altman has a strong directorial voice in this; his shot selection definitely affects how the story is told.
The most obvious example of directorial voice comes early on in the movie. Altman shows the parking lot of the studio office where Griffin Mill works. With a very long take, he moves around different areas to show what’s going on. He shows Griffin, the young producer, listening to stories from writers. He then moves over to show tours going on inside the movie lot. He then shows some person stopping Martin Scorsese to tell him how much he liked Cape Fear. In all, this take lasts minutes before it is over and shows about 4 or 5 different events going on.
This long take shows that there’s always something happening in Hollywood. Everyday, people are denied (except for a few per year), tourists come, and a multi-million dollar business goes on. So many things happen at once, and this scene captures that feeling with its rambling style from one situation to the next. This appears to be a signature shot for Altman, and there are some scenes later that are similar.
One example of a recurring idea in mise-en-scene and framing is Altman’s shot from outside. Altman chooses several times in the movie to shoot people in a building from outside, leaving the audience with an obstructed view. He does this in the long take with Griffin talking to writers. The audience can hear them talking perfectly but the view remains from outside the window. This also happens when Griffin is talking to Kahane’s foreign girlfriend on the phone outside her house. The audience has the same view that he does: restricted and through the windows.
This is a strong directorial voice because Altman could have easily shot the characters from inside in both cases. He chooses not too because it keeps the characters somewhat mysterious. In the first scene, the audience cannot see Griffin’s face very well, even thought hey know what is going on. They know what his job is like before they can really see him. In the second scene, the audience sees as much as he can, leaving their attention to what the girl looks like. Griffin is intrigued by her, and by not showing her completely, Altman creates intrigue in the audience. This also reflects a change in Griffin: he has been faithful (or so it’s assumed) to Bonnie so far, but he begins to fall for the foreign girl.
Altman also likes to use the various close-up shots to show emotion. He often shows Tim Robbins’ face in detail to convey Griffin’s feelings and anxiety. Griffin becomes more irritable after killing Kahane, and Altman tries to show this with Griffin’s actions and different shots of him. One moving scene comes in the police station where (I forget their characters’ names) Whoopi Goldberg and Lyle Lovett interrogate him to the point of making him explode. Altman starts with a close-up of Griffin’s head and zooms in as he gets more and more irritated. This makes a dramatic, emotional scene.
Altman’s shots at the end show a happy couple with a beautiful house and seem so romantic. Yet the audience knows that Griffin has killed his wife’s former lover, and that if he hadn’t, this happy scene would not have happened. The shot, though very beautiful and typical of a classic happy-ending movie, seems tainted. Altman keeps that in the audience’s mind as he drifts away to the close.
The ending of the movie is very ironic and reflexive. After all their talk about making a real and truthfully dark movie, the writers in the mock-movie Habeas Corpus fall to temptation, hiring big stars Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis, and giving in to the classical Hollywood happy ending. This is a great movie-within-a-movie ploy because The Player is definitely not a true happy ending: Griffin has cheated on his wife, killed a guy, gotten away with it, and now is married to the dead guy’s old girl. Of course, for Griffin, it is a happy ending, so does that it make it good? Is it acceptable?
The last sign of reflexivity comes when a writer tells Griffin about a movie called The Player that basically is about what happened in this movie (hence the name). Altman does this to leave a hint of doubt in the audience: is this movie for real? He tries to make it look that way. Few would believe so, but the scene gives a sense of uncertainty to the movie (it also shows that Kahane may not be the threat Griffin thought he was). This is a dark scene, and what is worse is that Griffin knows very well what’s going on-and he doesn’t care. This is somewhat reflexive because he has admitted to himself the truth and will use his own murder story to make money- in the movie we are currently watching. Altman’s dark comedy can admit to the audience that it is indeed funny and disturbing. His satirical picture of Hollywood dealings is not Classic Hollywood Styled, and yet it makes for a good movie. He proved his own characters wrong.