Produced/Directed by Robert Altman
Screenplay by Frank Barhydt, Robert Altman, and Patricia Resnick
Story by Robert Altman, Lionel Chetwynd, and Patricia Resnick
Music by Tom Pierson
Starring
Paul Newman
Fernando Rey
Bibbi Andersson
Vittorio Gassman
. . .
"All things of value fit the game. The game is the only thing of value."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
In a frozen hell of a world-maybe it's a new Ice Age brought on by nuclear winter-the final remnants of humanity while away their days in and around a ruined subterranean city playing a board game called Quintet. The rules of this game are utterly impenetrable to We the Audience, but the characters in the movie seem to understand them. The stakes are life and death, but the emotional affect of the people of these end times is severely reduced. These humans know the end is coming for the species. They hunted the seals to extinction. The supply of fish is uncertain. Cannibalism will only hasten the end; and anyways, there are dutiful packs of dogs trained to eat human corpses where they fall. And there's no discernible appetite for dogflesh. There's still electricity, but that could fizzle out any day. No one's getting pregnant since no person of conscience would seek the agonies of childbirth for a woman in these dire circumstances nor subject a newborn to such a harsh environment. No more art. No more technology. Plenty of religion, mostly centered around the murderous board game of Quintet, which affords the final humans a neat trick: the ability to die purposefully-to die for the sake of the game.
Quintet is the next level bummer of apocalyptic science fiction cinema. Humanity is so demoralized that it has literally gamified death as a means to (literally) play out its final days. And that's only for the privileged few who are good at the game. If you're no good at Quintet, then you receive no economic chits, you therefore must seek your own food outside of the game economy, and, inevitably, you slowly wither from the nutrition-deficient gruel spooned out by the church until you finally keel over where you stand and the carrion doggos swarm you and eat you. Please note that these dogs are not aggressive and do not attack the living. These vulture mutts are, in fact, the loyal friends of humanity by virtue of saving us from the final degeneration of cannibalism. It's surely something for which to be grateful in these final days. Good dogs, indeed!
The rules of Quintet are enforced by roaming referees who are empowered to use daggers and cutthroat razors to stab and slash and bleed out the losers. One overzealous ref uses a bomb that ends up wiping out an entire family. This bombing precipitates the plot of Quintet. A surviving member of this family unit assumes the identity of a dead man and goes questing for answers: why play such a lethal game? How were the explosives manufactured? Is there any reason to keep on living in a ruined city that participates in such a bizarre death sport?
Our Designated Protagonist Man is played by Paul Newman with an intriguing mix of doggedness and resignation. He's been away from the subterranean city for years, hunting seals, and has just returned due to the extinction of his prey, his livelihood. He remembers the game of Quintet from his younger days, and has little interest in it. The bombing drags him back in, and, in a sense, his quest is to get his head around the absurdity of Quintet even as he seeks justice. In his head, he's still a man seeking an honest living, a job, even though the human species is trudging towards an icy doom. He is hostile to the idleness and fickle childish sadism of Quintet even as he begins to come to terms with his own inner illusions about the prospects of meaningful work during humanity's final era.
One of the referees is memorably played with diabolical relish by Fernando Rey as a true believer in the game of Quintet. Rey and Newman have a series of conversations that also function as collisions between Believer and Skeptic. This leads to a somewhat on-the-nose climax, where I think things are spelled out that had already been revealed, but it's forgiveable. Quintet spends much of its running time with such a reticent protagonist that any extended dialogue risks seeming extravagantly loquacious. Since the film ends up being a sort of philosophical murder mystery, an Agatha Christie-esque scene of summing up becomes a formal necessity, I suppose, whatever its flaws.
The final scene could be edited into a supercut with the endings of films like The Shining, The Human Condition, John Carpenter's The Thing, Goyokin, McCabe and Mrs. Miller . . . it isn't just a murder mystery about the extermination of a single family unit, that's for sure . . .
