You heard me, I said coat. But not just any coat. It’s neither ordinary nor typical. A coat for warmth, yes, and comfort by all means, but one just as vital for ostentation. A coat to transform a wandering spirit, seemingly without a past, into the most important man in the room. Any room. And arguably the only man the tiny mining town of Presbyterian Church has ever really needed. A man of rambling speech, grandiose ambition, and all the reckless courage the Pacific Northwest required around the turn of the century. He’s bringing the flesh trade, my friends, and while it’s stunning indeed that no one had thought of it before, it’s best that it waited on John McCabe to make it so.
For another, quantity over quality, and true enough, a clapped-out hamlet inside of a week. With McCabe, all top of the line and the highest of high class. Women of culture; sophisticated, generous, and clean as a whistle. Clean-ish, at any rate. But we’re talking a gen-u-ine business plan. Strongly considered, detailed, and above all, profitable. And we owe it all to that coat.
If clothes make the man, McCabe’s coat says anything and everything with so little effort, you’re convinced well before he gets within earshot. One glimpse, and you know he’s to be taken seriously. Given its sheer volume, the coat openly declares what McCabe brings to the table, well before a contract is drafted. Arrogance to some, I suppose, but for those with open minds and loving hearts, a larger-than-life figure who couldn’t help but tame a continent. All doubts left on the front stoop. He’s here, and there’s nothing you can do about it. America writ large, with the salutes to match. And as we come to learn, just the sort of free-thinking carnival barker who has the good sense to ink Julie Christie as your madam.
No mere charity hire, this is a woman whose credentials enter the conversation well before she does. She’s got rules, regulations, standards, and policies. What’s more, they’re iron clad. Unambiguous and logical. As they say, everyone wins. Money will be spent, ledgers bursting with good news. A town expands. Word spreads. Soon, an empire.
There’s a whole hell of a lot to say about McCabe & Mrs. Miller, from the elegiac sadness afoot, to the underlying notion that dreamers, when they dream, often (and usually) end up shot. Capitalism as the surest route to rot. Man’s inability to see women as true partners, so they enslave what they don’t understand. The instinctive violence of our founding journey. Patriotism as the first and last refuge of a scoundrel. On and on, each lesson more depressing than the last. But as presented by the incomparable Robert Altman, perhaps the last true genius of the cinema, all stunningly, unavoidably true. Those who made America what it is have always, from their boots to their brow, been utter fools. Maniacs. Grifters and card sharps. Not an honest man among them. Though even that requires an explanation. Not honest in the conventional sense, in that they are using whatever they must to achieve a goal. But at their core, these are always among the most self-aware among us. They know the ends they desire. The debate, then, is on the margins; finding its way, always, to the means.
McCabe, while not exactly putting Rockefeller and Carnegie on notice, can still lay claim to a specific, firmly defined vision. Make a little money, put smiles on faces, and step away with a legacy. Maybe even franchise the brothel biz. What he didn’t seem to count on, curiously, is that from the moment one declares, there are others waiting in the wings. Usually with bigger guns. Certainly more capital. Buying you out because since when did America feed on small potatoes? Monopoly and largess are our stock in trade, and the littlest fish get gobbled up first and foremost.
Only McCabe hasn’t the stomach for that kind of war. He’s a fighter, but his fight will always be confined to a few square miles. This, here, is a national battle. And he can’t win. His destiny is death in the snow as the town burns, every last man and woman indifferent to what he has built. Community as an ideal, abandoned in an instant. And that’s the movie’s ultimate concession. By necessity we must form groups to survive, but the larger those groups become, the more likely they are to expel the very ones who brought it together in the first place. The individual, so necessary at the outset, buried and forgotten as time passes. Even McCabe. Especially McCabe. All because of that goddamn coat.
For Alex K’s review of this great movie, Click Here
For John Welsh’s Analysis, Click Here
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