The Player essays

The Player essays While not a motivating or inspiring film, Robert Altmans The Player is creative and amusingly satirical. The cinematography and editing tricks grabs the audience attention and throws them into the midst of Hollywood back-lot. The Players opening sequence, a lengthy 8-minute tracking shot, establishes the mood and ironic theme of the movie. Altmans The Player is a sardonic comedy on Hollywood. It is ironic because the whole movie deals with Hollywood and the movie industry and how shallow the industry can be. It is a film that states the obvious. The movie deals with the life force of the movie industry, its players and how superficial the world they live in is. It parodies a bad Hollywood movie, and farces the components that make it up. Our opening shot, an eight-minute tracking shot sets the ironic movie plot. Point given, we are greeted by the camera winding around buildings filled with many recognizable Hollywood faces; talent, directors, and writers. Griffin Mills (Tim Robbins) is a studio executive whose job it is to hear film "pitches," or outlines for film stories. Buck Henry (writer of "The Graduate") is shown throwing a pitch to him for the "The Graduate: Part II." A bored Mills looks on listlessly, as it is just one of the hundreds of pitches he will hear that week. The chaos on the Hollywood back-lot continues to build. There are grips and gophers, cameramen, and A.D.s, even the Japanese representatives of Sony take a tour of the studio. It seems to be quite a great opening for the film. In fact it is ingenious. Then Fred Ward wanders by and mumbling about how directors these days use too many cuts, cut-cut-cut, if only they were to use the long shot once again. The irony is, the entire first shot is a n epic 8-minute tracking shot. The hustle and bustle of the opening sequence is attractive. And ...