"Embrace It If You Want To, But It Won't Hug You Back..."

I'm a big fan of Robert Altman's movies, so I knew eventually I was going to have to face Quintet. Considered one of the director's most disastrous attempts, Quintet takes place in a post-apocalyptic civilization that is being slowly exterminated by a new Ice Age. The survivors are so disillusioned (or bored, or something) that they spend all their time playing an elaborate board-game. I'm sure you can guess what it's called. Anyway, some of these folks also play a live-action version of the game in which they hunt and kill each other one by one. There's not really any prize for winning, they're all just trying to stay active and vital during humanity's last few years on the planet. Paul Newman --who looks and acts as if he was tricked into starring -- plays an outsider who accidentally becomes involved in the tournament.

Here's a clip in which Newman encounters one of the other players, a man named St. Christopher who unveils mankind's final philosophy:

This movie screamed "Five of Swords" to me on so many levels. First there's the obvious -- five combatants out to stick each other, with a "sixth man" waiting in the wings to challenge the survivor. Then there's the film's metaphor of a world that has given up, going through the motions of survival but utterly surrendering in spirit.

And then there's the failure of the film itself. It was a bitterly difficult film to make -- they shot it at the abandoned site of the 1967 Montreal World's Fair. Every night they would hose down the metal structures so that the next day everything would be encrusted in glittering icicles. However, this made the set impossible to navigate safely, so there were numerous accidents and injuries. The cameras had to be kept near heaters or else the film itself would freeze up inside them. The chase scene at the end of the film lost all of its momentum because the actors weren't actually able to run -- between the deep snow and their huge heavy costumes, it was all they could do to lumber urgently. Since Altman was confident in his own ability to cobble together his works out of whatever people, places, and situations were at hand, I doubt he saw a problem with any of this. It is what it is, he surely thought.

It's also a bitterly difficult film to watch. Audiences hated it. The action limps along slowly, the characters are remote and unsympathetic, and the filmmakers chose to blur the outer edge of the frame in every single shot. This is supposed to accentuate the claustrophic, frozen setting, but it mostly just makes you feel like you have gunk in your eyes. There are many dazzling, intriguing moments in Quintet, but it is seriously humorless and inaccessible. It makes 3 Women look like Love, Actually. You can embrace it if you want to, but it won't hug you back.

So. What does this tell us about the Five of Swords? Well, there are more cheerful cards you could draw, that's for sure. This one hints that you may have lost your ability to see yourself and your struggle objectively; for all you know, you may be totally turned around, swimming toward the bottom of the pool when you think you're actually coming up for air. The Five may warn against hubris or fatalism. It may be urging you to cut your losses and retreat -- it's possible that you're fighting an unwinnable battle, and if that's the case, it's best to face the facts while you still have time to duck out gracefully. Or perhaps it means that you've done all that you can, and it's time to accept the lessons learned and move on to the next project.

Did Altman sulk over the failure of Quintet? Not visibly -- he went on to make three movies the following year. (Including Popeye, and say what you will about it, but it's basically the anti-Quintet.) So don't lose heart -- consider retreating to the mindset of the Four of Swords, or vaulting ahead to the Six. But here, there be ice-tygers.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Five of Swords