Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Robert Altman and Susannah York
Production Design by Leon Ericksen
Cinematography by Vilmos Zsigmond
Edited by Graeme Clifford
Music by John Williams
Soundscaping by Stomu Yamashta
Starring
Susannah York as Cathryn (Author)
Rene Auberjonois as Hugh (Husband)
Marcel Bozzuffi as Rene (Dead Frenchman)
Hugh Millais as Marcel (Aggressive Creep)
Cathryn Harrison as Susannah (Author's Child Self)
John Morley as Old Man with Dog
Barbara Baxley as Voice on the Phone
. . .
"There is no one else. There is only you."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
In a decrepit house in the heart of a fairytale countryside, a woman writes a book about gnomes, elves, unicorns, and mystical walks through enchanted forests. There are four or five landline phones inside her house. They ring, she answers, and weird voices assault her. Inside a single call one voice spontaneously transforms into another. Maybe it's crossed wires. Her husband enters the scene, harried about work, and his creepy driving gloves made me suspect him of being a killer from a giallo flick. Hubby spontaneously transforms into a dead Frenchman who openly acknowledges the fact that he is dead, and, amusingly, he still wants to make love. A hyper aggressive third man shows up to sexually harass the author and coerce her into rekindling their affair. The husband seems to have a sinister doppelganger-so that's two versions of one husband. When the author checks the storage space beneath the stairs she glimpses a younger version of herself in a magic mirror. The ghosts of past, present, and future seem to be haunting this house, which is, itself, doubled. The author, too, has at least one adult doppelganger, perhaps more than one. Everything swirls around the author, thus giving off the strong impression that We the Audience are inside her fractured mindscape.
Images is a film that uses careful camera placement, precision editing, intricate blocking, disquieting soundscaping, reality-based locations, and committed actors to construct the author's psychological landscape. There are only four or five practical special effects set-ups. Everything here is accomplished by cleverly tweaking basic film grammar, and applying these tweaks to intense performances. The results are eerie and uncomfortable. We're left with an uneasy mixture of fantasy, fear, trauma, resentment, and oppression. The author is not liberated by the fragmenting of space and time but rather seems to be trapped in each scene, in each moment, and at times seems to forget whatever brought her into a scene only to have her memories randomly return in upsetting fashion.
Eventually, the author does retaliate against this oppressive mindfuck, but she is unable to escape it. The all-encompassing mindfuck rearranges itself to absorb whatever the author throws at it, and so she remains trapped. Or it could be the case that she is only reliving actions and emotions she has already experienced, and/or iterations of same. I was left with the impression of a kind of 'Memory Shock,' like a Petroleum Shock-memory as a finite resource that you can stockpile and stretch and ration and refine but that has inescapable limits. Images seems to depict a closed-off mindfuck system that is still functional, but is winding down even as it involutes upon itself in upsetting and spectacular fashion.
