Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

It's hard to write about Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean - it has a delicate beauty to it that makes me more than a little nervous about trampling and stepping on wispy threads of subtext and most importantly purpose. It's the kind of film that I think is better approached by seeing it three or four times over the course of a year or two, stopping to run a thought or two through your mind every so often. It's a straightforward adaptation of a play, and I'm using 'adaptation' loosely, as it has lost none of the narrative or verbal trademarks of something you'd see live at a theater - with only Robert Altman's fluid visual direction brought to life by cinematographer Pierre Mignot adding a dimension you'd definitely miss out on if you were seeing it as a play. It all takes place in the one five-and-dime store in McCarthy, Texas and deals with a James Dean fan club who meets on the day of Dean's death, and then 20 years later for a reunion. The two time periods are mixed together, and the device that separates one time period from the other is a counter-length mirror in the store.

The store is run by Juanita (Sudie Bond) - an older matriarch, God-fearing and worn compared to the fan club women who are barely past their teens during the 1955 time period of the story. They are, of course, much older in 1975 when some come back for the reunion. There's the nervous and high-strung Mona (Sandy Dennis), sexy Sissy (Cher), quiet and reserved Edna Louise (Marta Heflin), and the much more verbose Stella Mae (Kathy Bates) all coming back and reuniting after having gone off in separate directions to live their lives. With them arrives a stranger, Joanne (Karen Black), who has what at first is an unknown link to the girls. There's some reminiscence about a male character, Joe Qualley (Mark Patton) - a young boy often taunted and beaten by the men in town, and unseen is young James Dean in 1975, whom Mona claims came as a result of a night spent between her and Dean while 1956 film Giant was being filmed - her being an extra in it. We see various flash-backs from the '55 period - all within the mirror of the shop.

I've never gone to a reunion in my life, but I imagine most who go to them try to reflect what's best about each and other's life, and minimize or hide what's bad. Ed Graczyk is using this as a kind of example to reflect on a larger scale the way we all build facades around ourselves and try to project a not entirely honest image of ourselves to others in our lives. Our failures go unmentioned, our sadness kept quiet and any negative change to our physical features hidden. In it's most visible way, this is observed when men wear wigs to hide their baldness, and people use make-up to try and normalize their physical features. We walk around and interact with people while carrying a sign with us saying "Everything is fine." We're not getting older, we're not desperately sad, we're not worried about the future, and we've never experienced anything that has left a never-healing open wound on our psyche. The reality of "today" really contrasts with the earlier epoch in the film - James Dean is alive and virile, things are happening, and possibilities seem endless - until clouds appear on the horizon.

The performers from the Broadway version of the Ed Graczyk play came back to feature in this film, and the well-rehearsed first-rate performances are all pretty special. Cher, Karen Black and Sandy Dennis really stick out and are in brilliant form - their emotionally demanding parts are strewn with pitfalls, and it would have been easy to overact considering how raw some of the moments are. Cher was new to something that required a full-bodied realization of a character (she'd be nominated twice for an Oscar during the same decade, winning for her performance in 1987 film Moonstruck, so there was undeniable talent there.) Just incredible performances - and seeing them are big reasons to see the film. The camera moves around them and through the store surprisingly swiftly and never really settles in one space, like a roaming fly about the place. We're always panning and zooming - shifting and tilting, restless and very free all the same. I liked this motion, especially seeing as we're bound to the one small location.

There's a deep abiding sadness - a nostalgic sadness - to this movie. Graczyk was inspired to write it after visiting Marfa, where Giant was filmed. The only remnant remaining from the giant mock-up of the mansion in the film was a propped up façade, in pieces and decaying. It brought back to him the memory of how vibrant things were when James Dean was alive, and this movie was being made. A nostalgic gulf, which always hangs around places that are decaying and disappearing. Mona, taking the place of the author, mentions her visit to the remains of the façade in the story - she collects small pieces to take away and hold onto. It adds an element of loss to the whole feel of the film. A loss of innocence, a loss of years to our lives, a loss of friendships and relationships, the loss of health, the loss we endure relating to the dead. Even the loss concerned with the quiet and ability of our minds. Reunions bring all of that into sharp focus. There's even the loss of our façade when lies are uncovered. That's why I thought the final shots of the film - of the decaying store - made for a really poignant departing epilogue.

So, that's the nostalgic sadness of Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. For Altman personally, it was a shift into a completely new direction. He hired the people he wanted, and he directed the exact way he wanted. Two of his sons were firm parts of the crew now. Robert Reed Altman was an assistant camera operator, having graduated from being a focus puller when he started on Nashville. Stephen Altman was a prop master in the art department. The closer kind of familial atmosphere was probably welcomed. The play and cinematic incarnation embraced Altman's comfort of exploring the psyche of characters, most often women, that he has a deep-seated storytelling love for. It's another reflection of That Cold Day in the Park, Images and 3 Women - while at the same time covering new ground. Using two-way mirrors in the method he does here presented a much-needed cinematic challenge. Considering the film got much better reviews than the play, I'd say this visual component enhances everything about this adapted version.

Overall, judged exactly as it is, I think this is another addition to that collection of Altman films which belong on the highest shelf. Obviously that's also down to Ed Graczyk's play, adaptation, and some award-worthy performances from the talented cast. No matter how priggish or deluded some of the characters can be, it's never hard to feel empathy for every single one of them in this - and as such it's an emotionally involving film which leaves a definite impression. Robert Altman directed a documentary about James Dean very early in his career in 1957 - a potent symbol of dreams dashed and loss. Of the fading remnants from a time when life was moving in an exciting direction. Of recollections that are still too vivid not to make the shared experience of the memory painful - no matter how nostalgic people are, and happy everything was. For the "Disciples of James Dean", that psychological visit to what remains of a decaying set is a release though - one that they may all have needed. A really great one, this.