Streamers

the honesty is the basic virtue of a film who is a precise image about army, homophobia and war. a form of manifesto. but more subtle and unmerciful and giving the no doubt message in the right terms. a film about masks and vulnerability. about prejudices and about silent. in fact, a film about freedom. simple, direct and out of excuses. and this did it special. because it propose a uncompromising view about a situation who is far to be a secret. because it did not verdicts. only a coherent picture of an institution, about fears of few young men and the dialogue who becomes a large corridor. and the acting is real inspired.

There is no other film that deals so confrontingly with homophobia - and with honesty.

It's a deliberately pressured and closed set, but careful editing softens the effect of the confined space. As in Hitchcock's "Rope", the camera never leaves the room, so the viewer feels caged, while the characters can come and go.

The setting is an army barracks in which the men will at any moment be sent overseas for active war duty. The characters have no choice but to negotiate how much they want to know or to accept about eachother.

Long before "don't ask - don't tell" became official US Forces policy, society in general had enforced rigid control over how open any homosexual could be - and Service Personnel have always held the worst reputation for homophobia.

So when Richie flaunts his complete disregard for machismo and swishes around the barracks, he's making one hell of bold statement. He teases Billy mercilessly with come ons, and Billy does his best to call Richie's bluff.

"Streamers" is about the truly dramatic consequences of censored communication. It's a gripping, demanding, powerful and very satisfying film that leaves your head spinning and your heart racing.

You practically need a de-briefing session afterwards, but "Streamers" is certainly one of the most memorable of dramatic movie experiences - on par with "A Clockwork Orange".

The performance by the entire cast is impeccable.

Following on the heels of "Come Back to the Five & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean", Altman brings another play to the screen. Like the earlier movie, this is an intensely serious drama about issues of sexuality and denial. Like the earlier movie, parts of it are extremely strident and/or "stagy", and like the earlier movie, much of it is redeemed by the excellent performances.

Although set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, the film is mostly about what goes on inside the heads of a small group of soldiers who are waiting to get shipped out. Much of the story's development is psychological, and not related to the specific period in history... if anything, the characters occasionally seem "too modern", but it's impossible for me to say whether this is actually the case (perhaps done intentionally by the director and screenwriter) or whether my impression of how they "should" have been behaving in the mid-1960s is colored too much by mass-media images from that time.

In any case, Altman and screenwriter David Rabe do a good job of confounding the audience's expectations and providing us with multi-faceted, complex characters, and there are some moments of chilling beauty, as when two older sergeants tell stories of paratroopers who didn't make it. While the issues involved and the serious tone will probably turn a lot of people off, this is a "worthy" member of the Altman canon, and well worth seeking out by anyone who is interested in his "filmed plays" of the 80s or in seeing him work on a small scale.

I agree with some other reviewers that the huge flaw in this movie is the script. Maybe in live theatre this dialog is compelling, but on screen it is just bombastic. The highly formal and eloquent prose is beautiful writing, but it keeps the characters from coming alive. Nobody anywhere talks like these characters.

This could have been a powerful movie about important issues that I happen to care about a lot; it comes across instead as an acting exercise, in which very talented actors carefully read expertly crafted lines. The direction is great, as it is in every Altman movie, but I wish he had not stayed so close to the play. He usually trusted his actors more than the scripts, and not doing so in this movie was a mistake.

As has been already said in so many words, this movie is a bit "stagey," with Altman sticking so close to the play instead of taking advantage of the movie aspect. Perhaps as a result, this might have been great to watch on stage, but it took forever to watch on TV. And it is very dated, with lots of racial and sexual orientation slurs. The acting was very good but again hampered by strictly following a script for a play. The setting in the barracks becomes tedious before the halfway mark, and the relatively few actors or especially extras in the background make it look too minimal. Historically, this is probably worth watching, but it is a bit tough to get through.