Cathryn (Susannah York) is a reclusive author of children’s books who is currently struggling to finish her latest work. This is mainly the result of her declining mental state, where she starts to see and hear voices that heighten her paranoia. In an attempt to liberate herself from the angst-filled city, she convinces her husband, Hugh (René Auberjonois) to take a trip with her to their isolated vacation home that sits in the middle of an idyllic country landscape. However, it becomes clear that Cathryn’s problems accompanied her as well, and she begins to be haunted by the ghosts of her past lovers, such as René (Marcel Bozzuffi), who died in a mysterious plane crash years before, and Marcel (Hugh Millais), who could quite possibly be the father of her unborn child, who appears at their vacation home with his daughter, Susannah (Cathryn Harrison), who bears a striking resemblance to Cathryn, and who sees the older woman as a surrogate parent and friend that she can depend on when her father can’t provide her with the guidance only a mother can give to a daughter apparently. Now confronted with a deteriorating mindset that is probably the result of an undiagnosed condition, Cathryn finds herself descending into complete madness as the hallucinations that to take over her life, and her actions to these imaginary figures start to have implications in reality, causing indelible effects on a previously content woman and her life.

Images is a very cold film, which is not something foreign when it comes to the work of Robert Altman, who was effortlessly able to oscillate between the bleak and the comforting throughout his prolific career, infusing all of his work with different degrees of warmth, depending on the requirements of the story. He’s a very easy director to praise, because not only did he have a distinctive style and command over every story he constructed, he was able to navigate a wide variety of genres, that prevented him from ever being aligned with a single category of film. Therefore, it only stands to reason, based on his frequent output and tendency to experiment with different conventions, that some of his films would be less impressive than others, Images being one of them. This is a film that I found extremely difficult to like – it isn’t something that lends itself to any redemption, and it actually develops in a way that is most certainly very distant from what we’ve seen from Altman in the past, where he could look at more grim subject matter without resorting to such a nihilistic approach. It is by no means a bad film – there’s a lot simmering below the surface that makes Images quite a fascinating film when taken on its own terms, but when we look into its intentions and how Altman conveys the central idea, it becomes clear precisely how convoluted this film actually is, and how its unsettling tone is not always beneficial to the story that it is trying to tell.

You need to venture quite far into this film to find some redeeming qualities about it, or rather something that isn’t frustratingly convoluted or unnecessarily disconcerting. The polarizing nature of Images can be associated with the fact that Altman was at his most experimental here, and while we can’t ever criticize someone for going against the grain, we have to acknowledge when it doesn’t go as well as it should. The film is, for lack of a better term, massively confusing, with ideas being thrashed around without any sense of order or logic – we can say that this the result of a director who wrote a very scant script that only developed a plot through collaboration with the actors during filming, which would normally be a fascinating experiment, but not with a film that is purporting to belong to the family of effective psychological horrors. The issue with Images is that it seems to be aligning itself with many of the other films in this genre, not realizing that regardless of how chaotic they may appear to be, the most disturbing works always tend to grow out of some logic, even when they are at their most unstable. There needs to be reason beneath the pandemonium, a sense of organization that helps facilitate (rather than prevent) narrative chaos. As far as I could see, Images has none of this – it is an admirable attempt to construct an intricate character study of a woman descending into madness, but with a complete absence of any rhyme or reason behind it, which creates a film that may be interesting to dissect and analyse, but is far from a pleasant viewing experience.

We can’t really blame Altman for wanting to make a film like Images – in concept, it’s a very promising film, because the story has a lot of potential, and it is something that both would work towards his sensibilities, as well as being a departure from his previous work, a shift from his already wavering comfort zone that could’ve proved him to be someone who can effectively make a film in any genre, as long as the premise is strong enough to support his ideas. This film has a really terrific plot, which makes the eventual execution all that more disheartening because with the right approach, the film would have most certainly stood as one of the director’s finest achievements. The shortcomings in this film are bewildering on their own – they’re too small to entirely distract from the fact that there is a really good film lurking beneath Images, but also not insignificant enough to be excused. It wouldn’t be fair to call it a bad film at all, but rather a disappointment, because while there are moments of insightful brilliance, as well as certain elements that make it worth watching, the parts that should’ve defined the film were squandered in Altman’s unstable attempt at constructing something deeply profound and terrifying, trying so hard to make an intelligent horror film, but somewhat failing on both counts.

At the very least, we can say Images had some very good performances in it – Susannah York, in the leading role, is perhaps the weakest of the cast, but still manages to be very good, considering the film around her did such an injustice to her character. Cathryn is positioned as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and there is clearly something that has caused her to develop into this tragic figure who is haunted by visions, which slowly send her spiralling into irreparable paranoia. York does her very best to portray a character who should be interesting based on the requirements for the role but never goes beyond simply being the archetype of the woman falling victim to madness. The film doesn’t care about Cathryn so much as they use her as a plot device, as evident by the other actors being given much better characters to play, as well as space to actually develop them beyond being bundles of one-dimensional quirks and qualities. René Auberjonois, a previous Altman collaborator, is excellent as York’s husband, a man whose true personality is never explicitly shown – either he is a loving partner who does his best to take care of an unstable wife, or he’s a scheming sycophant that uses his genial personality to win trust from all those around him. The first sequence of unhinged paranoia in Images sees Cathryn fearing that her husband is having an affair, and we frequently are teased with the idea that he’s unfaithful, without any resolution. This is an example of the ambiguity that the film makes good use of, and Auberjonois gives a performance that not only complements York, but takes over from her as the most fascinating part of the film. Cathryn Harrison and Hugh Millais also have compelling characters, who remain relatively ambigious, but effectively so.

It seems unfortunate that everyone except the main character sees some form of development. However, while so much more could’ve been done with the character of Cathryn, York does very well in carrying an uneven film, and in the brief moments when it appears that she may be progressing as a character, the actress really sells the truth to us in a way that Altman’s script sometimes prevents her from doing too often. The tone and intention of Images seems to be one that is meant to harbour divided reactions – its the only explanation for why a director like Altman would construct a film like this without the compulsion to actually clarify the details – even 3 Women (which seemed to be the more successful descendant of the psychological complexities that are introduced in this film) was remarkably lucid and could make sense of a set of deeply surreal ideas. Perhaps the reaction I felt towards this film is intentional – this is not a piece that can ever truly be loved. Its a cold-hearted, arid and hopelessly bleak film that tries to be a profound psychological horror without the elegance nor the intricacies – you can’t simply disturb through an uncanny storyline that doesn’t appear to have any deeper meaning (the climactic scene, whereby Cathryn “kills” her doppelganger, doesn’t make much sense, which is par for the course in a film like this), nor any discernible intention to provide any resolution, even if it is an unsatisfying one. The ending to this film is absurd, but only because it feels so out of place – there was something deeper lurking beneath this film, an underlying message that just fails to manifest, and had Altman tried something somewhat more lucid, the results could have definitely been far more effective.

Images is a frustrating film for a number of reasons, all of them related to what this film could’ve been. Altman stepped out of his comfort zone, which is something that never goes unrewarded, even with diminishing returns – he tries to make something complex, yet never realizing that the results were only increasing in absurdity as he went further into a story that seemed to be entirely without any direction. Images felt like the rambling first-feature of a film student trying to make a weird, perverse thriller that has some deeper meaning – the only difference is, in those kinds of films, the intention is always clear. This is a very creepy film, but that isn’t enough to compensate for the weak storytelling, which is outrageous for someone who has shown to be more than capable on countless occasions before and after making this film. The film doesn’t always work as well as it thinks it does, but there are fleeting moments that suggest there’s something more, which only causes more frustration, as we are constantly in search of the underlying message, only to come out the other side more exhausted and uncomfortable than before. Moreover, for a piece formed out of the intention to be an intimate character study, the performances are not as impressive as one would expect. The supporting cast unfortunately have to carry the film, as York’s position in the central role is usurped by the apathetic storyline that does neither her nor her character any justice, refusing to give her any space to grow outside of being the hysterical, unstable woman who slowly tries to regain a life she doesn’t seem to have. As someone who adores Altman, Images was a bitter disappointment – maybe time will facilitate some ruminations that will perhaps create a deeper appreciation for this film, but as a whole, it just doesn’t work, and while it can’t be dismissed entirely, it just doesn’t stand as something worth the effort. Its neither good nor bad, but rather something that just offers a moderately creepy atmosphere and inspires nothing more than passionless ambivalence.