Robert Altman was a genius – this is pretty much an objective fact by this point, because, for decades, he provided the cinematic world with some of its greatest masterpieces, crafting one astonishing film after another, many of which have gone on to be hallmarks of filmmaking, with M*A*S*H, 3 Women and Nashville being amongst the finest American films ever made. Admittedly, I have only started to appreciate Altman more recently, and while admiration was certainly present and I was well aware of his status as one of the great iconoclasts of American cinema, adoration only began to pervade into my relationship with Altman and his work in the past few years, where I’ve had the great privilege of exploring his work and dissecting each of them, uncovering the inherent genius present within each of his works. One of his more fascinating projects is The Player, a Hollywood satire that is often considered one of the very best of its kind – and having kept it in mind, but never actually getting the chance to watch it, I was unaware that this was not just a simple satirical comedy – it is an unrestrained masterwork, a pitch-black comedy that isn’t afraid to cut deep and to mock the industry in which it was made. At the outset, I was entertained, but by the end of the film, I was screaming in glorious existential despair, because  what the viewer doesn’t realize is that Altman and screenwriter Michael Tolkin (who based the film on his own novel) didn’t set out to just make any ordinary satire of show business – they made a revolutionary statement on the film industry, taking aim at the very structure upon which these films are built and deconstructing them with effortless ease and almost malicious glee, not being afraid to introduce unlikable characters into one of the most outrageously enthralling dark comedies of the 1990s. It is a film made over a quarter of a century ago, yet it still remains so bitingly relevant, and it is as hilarious now as it was then, and just as bleak and hopeless, being almost misanthropic in how it portrays all of its characters as deluded, pompous egomaniacs in search of fame, fortune and accolades, all of which are apparently validating to the insecure egos of these individuals.

Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is a high-powered movie producer, an executive at a successful film studio, known for making popular but otherwise meaningless films that have the facade of being important because audiences often find themselves responding positively to the studio’s brand of overly-sentimental, predictable and calculated storytelling techniques. They can bring in a profit, but their acclaim is starting to fade while other studios venture into more daring territory, such as through experimental works that challenge the notion of what cinema can represent. Mill is known to be quite difficult to impress, and his intention to be almost omnipotently powerful causes him to dismiss more burgeoning screenwriters and potential filmmakers than he embraces, destroying dreams and ambitions with as little as a phone call – these are just parasitic, desperate individuals trying to break into an industry that may just be the most superficial, heartless and malicious. It is all “business as usual”, which seems to be Mill’s mantra when making these decisions, and how he chooses to exercise his right to make decisions on how the general public are supposed to respond to works. This certainly seems to upset a few people, including a mysterious screenwriter who starts to send Mill ominous postcards with death threats, likely based on his dismissal of an idea, which has festered into sincere hatred, which terrifies our protagonist. Intending to find the root of this disdain, Mill comes across David Kahane (Vincent D’Onofrio), a failed screenwriter who holds a sincere grudge against the producer due to him dismissing one of his ideas months ago, and thus makes him the most likely culprit of the death threats. A heated confrontation turns into a physical altercation, which subsequently results in a fatal accident, and Griffin Mill, the all-mighty purveyor of Hollywood, has to narrowly escape detection if he wants to keep his job, his status and his freedom, navigating another side of the Hollywood underbelly, constantly looking over his shoulder for the next death threat, or perhaps (even worse), an arrest warrant – all the while, trying to help his studio make their next big breakthrough picture, which is not particularly easy when he is in constant threat of being ousted from the job and replaced by someone far more revolutionary.

The Player does seem quite conventional – a darkly comical look at the film industry, adding some heightened drama into it to make it appear more compelling and entertaining. However, The Player is far deeper than simply being an ordinary satire, and right from the outset, while it does have the familiar, glamorous charm of other films about filmmaking, there is something far more sinister lurking beneath the surface. There is something about films  set in the movie industry that is profoundly unsettling, and The Player reminded me of three pivotal works, all differentiated by their tone and stories, but united by their common themes – Joel and Ethan Coen’s Barton Fink, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and most significantly of all, Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, which is heavily referenced in this film. This film doesn’t dare take the form of just any ordinary Hollywood comedy – it is a dark, twisted and deceptive film, one filled with suspense and mystery. It is always something quite fascinating when a film about Hollywood takes on features of the genres it satirizes, and there are moments where The Player reminded me of some of the great film noirs of the past, with the brooding cinematography, the twisted narratives and the mystery buttressed by suspenseful music and a generally uneasy tone, all of which work together to construct a very bleak, yet still darkly hilarious, satire on the industry. I am bewildered by the fact that I waited so long to watch The Player – this is the Hollywood satire I’ve been waiting my entire life to watch, and I was not prepared to be this enthralled by it. It is an immersive experience, a ferocious dark comedy that never dares to take this story anywhere predictable, and it seems to relish in misleading the audience to believe anything to be true. It is a magnificent satire, and perhaps the finest film on the tumultuous, impenetrable world of entertainment, one that can often end up being quite lethal with even just a single wrong step.

Only Robert Altman could assemble an ensemble like the one in The Player – it is a veritable panoply of acting legends, creative iconoclasts, beloved characters actors and unexpected performers, many of which play themselves. Tim Robbins leads the film as Griffin Mill, the titular “player” who seems to enjoy his status as one of the industry’s most powerful men, albeit one with inner insecurities, especially when the rumours that he is to be ousted from his comfortable executive position to make way for a more popular, but far less instinctive, individual from a rival studio. Robbins is terrific, and his transformation as this character is amongst his finest work – he descends from an arrogant, overly-hubristic individual who believes himself to be invincible, to an anxious, paranoid, wide-eyed man who, instead of facing the consequences of his actions, runs away from them with relentless haste, with the bleak, panicked disposition of a Kafka anti-hero. Robbins has a certain set of talents that make him quite a unique actor, and he is able to play every aspect of Griffin Mill with astonishing finesse and unexpected nuance – whatever the character demands, he readily provides – smarmy arrogance, pretentious elegance, dashing romanticism, or fearful despair. The Player is a great showcase for Robbins’ talents, and while has certainly established himself as a consistently great actor in both the leading and supporting capacity, The Player is the first time I have been in almost unspeakable awe of his talents, and he extends further into this role than I have ever seen him before – notable moments include the third-act breakdown, where he calmly sits in despair about the future, dismissing everything around him and just focusing on his escape from Hollywood – both physically and mentally. It could’ve so easily been an archetypal, conventional Hollywood elite role, which shouldn’t be a stretch for any actor to play, but Robbins takes this character far deeper than we’d expect, and the results is a truly extraordinary performance from an actor who is consistent but is rarely given these kinds of opportunities.

The film is focused almost entirely around Robbins, and not only does he give a fantastic central performance, his interactions with other actors in the film were equally as remarkable – he’s certainly a generous performer, being able to take the spotlight when it is necessary, but also allowing his co-stars to have some tremendously impactful moments as well. There aren’t really any other performances in The Player that are as complex as Robbins’, but there are certainly an array of tremendous supporting players that dedicate themselves entirely to their characters, regardless of the size of their roles. Whoopi Goldberg is as endearing as usual as the cheerful detective with an underlying sinister nature that pervades the film and makes her appear to be the character closest to seeing through the deception. Lyle Lovett proves himself to not only be a great musician, but also an unconventionally talented actor – for the first two acts, his performance is almost wordless, relying on the physicality of the role, and the subtletly in his performance was quite impressive. Greta Scacchi is also quite excellent as the mysterious femme fatale, being the eventual downfall of our lead character, and her mystery is only supported by her effortless charm and makes me wonder why she didn’t achieve more in her career. Richard E. Grant (one of Altman’s most endearing collaborators, working with him on three films) is exceptional as the screenwriter who is passionate about his newest project, hoping to make a film that goes against every notion of what Hollywood stands for, yet pitching it to the very embodiment of the Hollywood machine (strangely, The Player was made in a time when independent cinema was not nearly as popular as it is now, and thus the chase for the studio dollar was far more important than artistic expression back then). The Player also has dozens of cameos from many enormously famous people, and there seem to be only two directors who can manage to get established, world-famous icons to play extras in their films – Terrence Malick and Robert Altman, and only the latter allows them to do anything worthwhile, even if they hardly even say a word. I won’t even mention some of these names, because there was a certain delight in watching the film and spotting multitudes of familiar faces, which lends this film an almost ethereal quality, and the idea that we are completely unaware of who might appear in the film makes for a compelling Hollywood-set mystery. Even if the story was not subversive, brilliant and wonderfully twisted, The Player would be worth watching just for its status as a star-studded affair.

Luckily, The Player is subversive, brilliant and wonderfully twisted. Perhaps what is most striking about this film is how relentlessly meta it is – it often seems to be quite openly mocking itself, as well as being a metafictional film – just look at the ending, where Griffin Mill takes a phone call from a writer who is pitching an idea for a dark comedy about a studio executive who kills a young writer, entitled…The Player. This is a film that we know is fiction – yet, it dares to provoke the conception of the truth, and quite openly attempts to subvert what we think to be real as being merely false information, and there is a certain delightful deception that pervades throughout the film, arriving as a powerful, inert satire that doesn’t only satirize the industry – it incites thought in the audience. There is a certain cyclical nature about this film, and it often seems to be a film about itself – and it threatens to challenge the very notion of narrative storytelling, and the best way to describe The Player is as a postmodernist paradise. It cleverly dismisses the concept of the grand narrative, and introduces us to a certain circularity that left me howling in absolute delight, because while it may be considered nothing more than a lazy trick, a way to end this film on the same darkly comical note that persisted throughout, it does take quite a daring filmmaker to resolve the film as he did. A film about Hollywood is not entirely difficult to end – either the film gets made, or it doesn’t. Yet, The Player provides us with an ending that is not necessarily an archetypal happy ending, yet it is thoroughly satisfying – it lends a certain ambiguity, both to the nature of how this film ends – was Griffin quite literally getting away with murder the truth or was it creative liberty done on behalf of the producer, who wanted to ensure a happy ending? – and to the very concept of reality. It is almost too much to describe, and it should certainly be experienced, because the layered texture of this film is its strongest merit, and leaves an indelible impression on the viewer, who just cannot help feeling entirely compelled by the film.

The Player is almost indescribably complex, and it is a fully-realized, complex masterpiece that manages to take a typical structure – the Hollywood satire – and turn it into something so unexpectedly great. Robert Altman should not be underestimated, because while he was certainly prolific and did have his fair share of noble failures when he hit all the right notes, a masterpiece was created. This has never been truer than it has been here in The Player, which doesn’t only satirize the Hollywood community – it leaps at the jugular, viciously disassembling it and very carefully rebuilding it as an honest, bleak depiction of the industry, something that is simultaneously hilariously outrageous, and deeply unsettling. The Player is really a tremendous film, an exuberant, masterful expression of satirical prowess and unhinged wit on behalf of the film’s talented creators, who work alongside a wonderful cast to bring life to one of the greatest satires of its kind, and a film that cannot ever be forgotten. This is a towering achievement, and I absolutely adored nearly every moment of The Player, and it still persists as a disturbing testament to the search fame and fortune, and how easily one can be corrupted by the price one has to pay to make it in an industry that will faster destroy you than allow you to realize your dreams. An impactful, haunting masterpiece, and amongst Altman’s greatest works, and undeniably one of the best films of the 1990s.