My Ultimate Filmmaker
Choosing an all-time favorite filmmaker has always been a challenging task for me. In reality, cinema is far too diverse and filled to the brim with countless unique voices to choose or narrow one filmmaker as an ultimate favorite. The same with genre, era, or wave; it is simply too hard to pick one.
I discovered my love and appetite for film when I was a kid. Since then, deciding a singular favorite filmmaker has always been a dynamic thing. It keeps changing and changing. So, in the end, I decided never to choose any filmmaker as my favorite, so I can freely diversify my watchlist without any sort of preference. Yet, Something indescribable inside me still feels the nonsensical demand to select a filmmaker as the ultimate favorite.
Like when I was in junior high, I was obsessed with Richard Linklater’s early films. I was amazed at how his films depict youth as a complex, multifaceted, and quite simply brutal time in a person’s life. Dazed and Confused (1993) and Slacker (1990) depict youth in a fundamentally honest way. I felt like, just like me, these characters are having a genuinely complicated time growing up. After the Linklater phase, like any teenage film-bro, I was mesmerized by Paul Thomas Anderson’s films. This is almost exclusively for his first two films, namely Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999). In both films, I was awed by how PTA crafted a chaotic/dramatic atmosphere with tremendous intensity but still maintained the quality of his characters. His characters have always been amazingly specific and complex.
The more I dive into films from all eras and all different corners of the world, I find it even more challenging to choose. From Jim Jarmusch, Todd Solondz, Sidney Lumet, Buster Keaton, Werner Herzog, Agnes Varda, Pedro Almodóvar, Yasujirô Ozu. This need to pick a favorite is becoming harder and harder.
But to finally end this longtime dilemma, I decided to choose one filmmaker not necessarily as a favorite, but as someone who had a significant influence on how I view cinema as a whole. As a director, Robert Altman defines the passion one can have for the medium of film. To justify my pick, Here’s a small summary of his electric career.
Altman’s filmmaking only started to skyrocket after he directed M*A* S*H (1970) when he was already 49 years old. He directed the film after decades of producing television movies and series. M*A*S*H was released when young filmmakers like Spielberg, Lucas, Scorcese, and Copolla had immediate success after just starting out. The film became the third highest-grossing film of the year and won Palme D’or in Cannes. But somehow, the name Altman seems so rarely discussed when compared to Coppola or Scorcese.
Only in his late 40s, when Altman’s career started to escalate, and to me, that is a testament on how the medium of film flows deep in his veins, he was born to direct, and nothing can stop him. He’s a maverick in his distinctiveness. His films have a highly naturalistic style while still embracing imaginative and incredibly tense plots. He dodges Hollywood cookie-cutter aesthetics and cliches that felt to be very repetitive to him. Altman’s films such as The Player (1992) and Nashville (1975) eschew “heroic” characters and other popular elements that are simply too frequent in Hollywood narratives. In fact, most of his work focuses on characters who are loners, losers, and even rascals.
Even with his distinctiveness, he somehow never specialized within a singular genre. He mastered both comedy and drama, and he often combined the two. He can make films with numbers of characters with elaborate and heavy dialogue like Short Cuts (1993) while also execute slow and emotional character-centered films, like Secret Honor (1984), a film with only one actor.
Known as an “anti-Hollywood” director, he was recognized as very critical and tries to stay away from Hollywood pretensions. My favorite Altman film, Short Cuts (1993), was made when he was 68 years old. The film has 22 different “main” characters. These 22 characters are told side by side without feeling cramped or imposing. Each character and story were structured so meticulously, so each storyline felt essential to the overall theme and narrative. In the film, Altman was also able to create a comfortable pacing style so that in about 3 hours and 10 minutes of the runtime, the audience can quickly grasp each character’s story with perfect portions and shifts.
Altman was a Maverick. He was always very unconventional and an independent thinker. This was all very evident in all of his works. After he died in 2006, after cinema is done mourning, Altman’s influence in contemporary filmmaking continues to advance. Modern filmmakers like the Safdie Brothers, Noah Baumbach, and Alejandro González Iñárritu, all expressed that they were deeply influenced by Altman. Even Paul Thomas Anderson said that his films are basically covers of Altman’s. He then dedicate There Will Be Blood (2007) posthumously to him.
In 50 years of work, Altman has succeeded in changing cinema while inspiring new filmmakers to be more brave and opinionated through their works. His legacy is still felt today. On a personal note, Altman made me appreciate cinema further, how as a filmmaker, experimenting and innovating are a crucial and essential thing. And the fact that Altman got his big break when he was 49 years old continues to inspire me to continue to aspire greatness.
