Thieves Like Us

[susanstinson]

I watched a video of this movie in black and white on the small screen of my hand-me-down TV (I get two channels, and have to use pliers to switch) as a tribute to Robert Altman, and because it's a movie that my brother told me to see years ago, that I'm just now getting to. It's got a brilliant use of both landscape and what feel to me like traditional lacunae (gaps, you know -- in conversation, in what gets addressed and what doesn't) in rural Southern culture to build this intensity of violence and loss and portraits of laconic true love and such tough, feeling women. The radio offers a flow of commentary, ending with this grieveously beautiful and stately shot of pregnant Shelley Duvall walking slowly in a crowd up some broad classical stairs in a train station, on a way to a random new city to soldier on with her life, while the women's skirts move in elegaic flutters and waves, and the hate-mongering Father Coughlin gives rich, stirring tones to a radio broadcast. So disturbing and beautiful, with everything I expect from art.