3 Women

3 Women

That’s why I find myself descending into the depths of “3 Women” again, a movie that was dreamt up. The film of 1977 by Robert Altman is a masterpiece in which three women’s identities get so mixed up that they become a single person or form one family at the end of the film an enigmatic finale.

I have seen it over and over, gone through it twice as shot-by-shot analysis, and yet every time it seems as if it is happening now. But then recurring dreams are like that: We’ve had them but not quite exorcised them because those dreams bear some unsolved mysteries.

Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule play these three women, who reside in an apartment building somewhere in California desert. Duvall plays Millie Lammoreaux a therapist working at a center for elderly; Spacek portrays Pinky Rose –her roommate who finds work there too. Rule acts as Willie Hart the pregnant wife to the owner of the establishment, she moves around with gloomy silence isolating herself from others and paints out godlike beings on its bottom, monstrous males and females threatening each other.

There are men all around her but only one man happens to be clearly drunk among them. Edgar (Robert Fortier) is Willie’s husband who has little to say with gruff voice accompanied by dry ironical remarks about he himself being motorcycle rider, gunman chivalrously styled only awkwardly funnily known as well as sex starved alcoholic unable to see his own wife. Other men at work or lounging near the pool seem interesting for Millie always preparing for dates and dinners that will just never happen.

In opening scenes these three women stand for three roles of many women play today. Willie is a mother figure heavily pregnant in knowledge sadnessa goddess estranged from people moving across desert landscape. Mille can be described as a cheerful consumerette who reads women’s monthlies and “coordinates” her wardrobe in yellow and white, plans meals by cooking time, and obsessively exchanges recipes. Pinky is portrayed as a girl-child entering the film; she blows bubbles into her Coke through a straw, walks behind the twins employed at the senior citizens’ center with childlike glee on her face, makes faces, tells Millie: “You’re the most perfect person I’ve ever met”.

The first parts of the movie are all about Millie’s continuous attempts to be accepted by people around her at work or home. She dreams of going out with Tom, which supervises barbecue at poolside diners or doctors responsible for looking after patients in the hospital across from old people’s centre. However when she goes into their cafeteria for lunch sitting between two males who speak continuously without even acknowledging or recognizing her our discomfort is palpable. In this movie filled with mirrors, reflections and multiple images Mille always seems to be turning herself out repeatedly minutely adjusting clothes/hair/makeup peering into a mirror while others do not seem to see it quite that way.

At the work place, Millie is ordered to show Pinky how things are done. Their dialogue in this scene shows very sharp and precise American idiomatic speech. Before taking her into a warm swimming pool for exercise, Millie asks Pinky “What is wrong with you?” However, she does not think that there is anything wrong with her. ‘Well you must have something wrong with you or else why would be here?’ Finally, however, Pinky realizes that Millie is playing the part of a hypothetical patient talking to her. She yells “my head” just like a little girl. “Oh my legs hurt.” Then suddenly she goes underwater quickly while Millie has to pull her back up looking all around as if someone might have seen it.

Throughout the movie there is water everywhere. Altman says that the first shot is like amniotic fluid around an embryo. The second shot shows old people descending slowly into the exercise pool returning to the water from where their lives began.” A wavy line which floats across the occasional frame could be an umbilical cord. The horrifying pictures of Willie live at the bottom of this swimming pool, and then Pinky jumps off and into it once she learns about what happened between them when Willie was knocked out, saved in time before being rushed to hospital.

Altman tells us that Ingmar Bergman’s film “Persona” had some influence on him and this we can see through Pniky; who ends up doing harmful secret things to Milly; spying on her secrets until finally she tries to absorb and steal who she is . There was also a central moment of violence in “Persona” when it felt as if one film broke off and another began anew. It works similarly when will pinky jumps into the pool creating real split within its structure

Willie reassembles himself while maintaining control over his environment. Pinky dresses herself in Millie’s clothes, uses her social security number, reads her diary. In an early scene with Millie assigning them each a twin bed, Pinky changes and comes in Millie’s bed. As Millie calls her “Pinky” she explodes: “How many times do I have to tell you? My name is not Pinky! It’s Mildred!”

During these developments Shelley Duvall’s reaction shots are really chilling. Pinky’s actions are making no sense to Milly but she knows that something wicked is going on. Consider how strange it is when two visitors (John Cromwell and Ruth Nelson) come up at the hospital posing as Pinky’s parents. She says that she does not know who they are or she has never seen them before.

Certainly they look too old to be her parents; Cromwell was in his 90s when the film was made). So who are they? Imposters? Grandparents or adoptive parents? We never really know at all. Pinky gets into the desert with nothing from the past and literally no identity except for killing Millie by taking hers away from her. And yet, beneath their surface consciousness all along there lies Willie character which will eventually take both of their lives away.

When I first saw this movie, it was at the Cannes Festival, where Robert Duvall won the Best Actress Award (she also later won the Los Angeles Film Critics’ award, with Spacek winning from the New York Film Critics Circle). Altman told me he had dreamed this story: “Everything perfect. The story, casting and all.” He noted it down and tried to shoot it just as he had dreamed.

Like many dreams, it ends without concluding, and seems to shift toward deeper and more disturbing implications just before fading out. In his DVD commentary on this film Altman speculates about its meaning in much the same way an audience member might do; admits some of its elements remain a mystery to him; and makes a shocking observation concerning its last shot.

As the camera pulls away from where they now live together in a house which is also used by three women and pans over to piles of thrown away tyres. According to Altman, “If you were to ask me where I think Edgar is at the end of the film well I think he’s buried under those tires.”

However there is absolutely nothing concrete in the film that supports this idea. Nonetheless, being coherent or logical does not make it whole as a movie. It’s like turning back on itself again says Altman. There are sharp scenes of social comment such as Millie’s graduated cruelties or peculiarities of behavior like Pinky squirting cheese spread onto crackers then spilling cocktail shrimp from a bottle penning her dress.

The senior center appears run by couples who have reversed roles the doctor looks effeminate while his female assistant resembles male characters. Things get quite specific: how to use the time clock; how can we let off early for Fridays? We don’t like twins – there’s no mistaking that fact, people! At times specifics recur like in a dream; for example Millie consistently gets her yellow dress caught in her car door. Gerald Busby’s portentous atonal score contrasts with such everyday occurrences.

But against these realistic details Altman marshals the force of dreams. In dreams we try out new selves, cast our friends as different characters and find ourselves inexplicably on new jobs or in new places where the rules are shown but never quite understood. The dream here is perhaps by all three women, each one thinking the other two are real, and each one not having what the others do. As men rumble without consequence from a distance, they grope for themselves through mystery towards one another: Willie sadly, Pinky hungrily emotional and Millie because she is ignorant.

“3 Women” has been rereleased on a Criterion DVD which includes especially personal and revealing comments by Altman. Look also at Great Movies reviews of “McCabe & Mrs. Miller” and “Nashville” both directed by Altman.

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