QuintetFor those benumbed to the warmth of compassion, life becomes little more than a diversion--a game to pass the time while waiting for the end. Quintet is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film set in a new ice age, where the few surviving members of humanity live in remote outposts that barely protect them from the frigid climate. Essex (Paul Newman) and his pregnant wife, Vivia (Brigitte Fossey), travel to one of these icy cities for work and to reunite with his brother, Francha (Thomas Hill). After an intentional explosion deprives him of his family, Essex adopts the role of the erstwhile assassin--called Redstone (Craig Richard Nelson)--and finds himself embroiled in an intricate conspiracy of death and deception.
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Quintet takes its name from a fictional game played by virtually everyone in this bleak future. It requires very few pieces, and represents a combination of entertainment, social involvement, and even religious significance. The story goes that the writer and director of Quintet, Robert Altman, created the game in-between projects, and looked for a way to incorporate it into the narrative framework of a film. What little the audience sees of Quintet in action resembles a game of bridge crossed with backgammon, using a set of dice to represent the unknown whims of fate--the only constant for humanity in this bleak future. There are moves that describe "shuffling alliances", and an elusive "sixth man" declares the "killing order" for players to eliminate one another. These details allude to the plot of Quintet--an outline of the thriller itself. The intrigue and double-crosses in suspense films often play out like a game, replete with feints and subterfuge, and the game of Quintet is like a pantomime of this. Led by the ebullient yet enigmatic emcee, Grigor (Fernando Rey), several people are solicited with secret scrolls early on in Quintet, which Essex discovers from the body of the late Redstone are lists of players in a real-life game of Quintet, one played for the ultimate stakes.
Essex is a stoic man, forged through years of hard living in this frozen hell. He came to the city to find a way to support his blossoming family after all of the seals in the south had been hunted to extinction. The city is a rundown, ramshackle shelter, purportedly housing upwards of five million people--a number that appears to be dwindling fast, even without the murderous "LARPing" of a real-world Quintet game. Essex and Vivia come across multiple corpses en route, many frozen from the bitter cold despite the security of the city. The only living creatures thriving in this environment are a pack of eager, roving rottweilers that feed on the bodies left behind. The sanctity of life has mostly become an antiquated novelty in this last bastion of civilization. When Francha meets Vivia and realizes she is pregnant, he describes it as a miracle, and that he hasn't seen someone so young in the city in ages. The reason for this is that the people of this city have become indoctrinated by despair, incapable of beholding the beauty of life any longer. When one of the players called Saint Christopher (Vittorio Gassman) delivers a sermon to the destitute, he speaks of Quintet as though it were the quintessence of life and God all wrapped up into one; but his preaching is wholly negative and never uplifting, focusing exclusively on the "guilt of life" and the "void" that bookends it. Quintet does little to enrich the lives of those who play it; instead, it distracts them from reality and the pain of existence. This accounts for why there is a predominance of people who are not only resigned to death, but others who actively seek it out for sport. The game is not a representation of life, but a parody of it, embracing some of humanity's basest qualities, like megalomania and paranoid greed, instead of love and compassion.
Quintet avoids expounding on what caused the severe climate change event in the first place. The film was shot in the abandoned 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal, and during the winter to capitalize on depicting a world encased in ice. The location was sprayed with water at night to generate the frozen stalactites that hang from every surface and railing, making the set look even more like a frigid wasteland consumed in icy death. A frosted corona is present around the camera's eye in virtually every shot, adding to the feeling that this place is so cold that even the audience's vision is clouding over from the extreme climate; it also resembles the framing around an old photograph, or perhaps a dream. The musical score by Tom Pierson is diverse, from the opening which is like a faint piano plinking away at the keys like icy fingertips, to occasional outbursts of blaring horns that shock the system like a dive into frozen waters. The number "five" is ubiquitous in Quintet, from the eponymous game to the architecture and makeup of the city. Essex seeks out his brother by interpreting a series of large, glass maps fallen into disrepair. These maps are riddled with images of pentagons, which he informs Vivia represents the five different sectors housing the city's five million residents. When Essex finds his brother and tells him how he found him through this system, Francha is almost surprised because the thought of using this resource had not even occurred to him. This reaction speaks of a society that has become so ineffectual and decadent that they have lost the ability to understand the world around them, allowing themselves to indulge in playing games as they await death's embrace. Whatever hold Quintet has on the residents of the city is so powerful, that all other needs fall by the wayside, like the bodies that make feasts for the hounds.
Part of the reason that Essex adopts the role of the player who murdered his family is to understand why they had to die, while discovering just what kind of people are involved in the game. Essex crosses paths with most of the other players, including Deuca (Nina Van Pallandt), the icy proprietress of the hotel where he stays, and his neighbor, Ambrosia (Bibi Andersson), a charming and seemingly sweet woman who beats Essex in a practice game of Quintet, commenting that she is always stuck "playing the sixth man", which she considers "an advantage but boring". Essex becomes increasingly vigilant after he is approached by the suspicious Grigor who bursts into his room with a straight razor, then repeatedly and ominously refers to him as a friend from then on. Essex spies on Ambrosia through the air vent when she is confronted by a frantic player named Goldstar (David Langton), who is convinced that Ambrosia and Saint Christopher--whom Grigor seems to favor--are plotting against him. Essex soon understands that trust comes at a premium in this city, and that between a web of tenuous alliances and vague conspiracies, his own deceptions and secretive efforts to infiltrate the game have made him a full-fledged player of it.
Recommended for: Fans of a novel if bleak view of a future where mankind has consigned itself to damnation by giving up on life and embracing its vices rather than fighting to survive. Quintet is a visionary film with a clever motif--a game integrated into the plot that alludes to the plot of the thriller--featuring a diverse and talented international cast in an immersive (if hellish) setting.
Essex is a stoic man, forged through years of hard living in this frozen hell. He came to the city to find a way to support his blossoming family after all of the seals in the south had been hunted to extinction. The city is a rundown, ramshackle shelter, purportedly housing upwards of five million people--a number that appears to be dwindling fast, even without the murderous "LARPing" of a real-world Quintet game. Essex and Vivia come across multiple corpses en route, many frozen from the bitter cold despite the security of the city. The only living creatures thriving in this environment are a pack of eager, roving rottweilers that feed on the bodies left behind. The sanctity of life has mostly become an antiquated novelty in this last bastion of civilization. When Francha meets Vivia and realizes she is pregnant, he describes it as a miracle, and that he hasn't seen someone so young in the city in ages. The reason for this is that the people of this city have become indoctrinated by despair, incapable of beholding the beauty of life any longer. When one of the players called Saint Christopher (Vittorio Gassman) delivers a sermon to the destitute, he speaks of Quintet as though it were the quintessence of life and God all wrapped up into one; but his preaching is wholly negative and never uplifting, focusing exclusively on the "guilt of life" and the "void" that bookends it. Quintet does little to enrich the lives of those who play it; instead, it distracts them from reality and the pain of existence. This accounts for why there is a predominance of people who are not only resigned to death, but others who actively seek it out for sport. The game is not a representation of life, but a parody of it, embracing some of humanity's basest qualities, like megalomania and paranoid greed, instead of love and compassion.
Quintet avoids expounding on what caused the severe climate change event in the first place. The film was shot in the abandoned 1967 International and Universal Exposition in Montreal, and during the winter to capitalize on depicting a world encased in ice. The location was sprayed with water at night to generate the frozen stalactites that hang from every surface and railing, making the set look even more like a frigid wasteland consumed in icy death. A frosted corona is present around the camera's eye in virtually every shot, adding to the feeling that this place is so cold that even the audience's vision is clouding over from the extreme climate; it also resembles the framing around an old photograph, or perhaps a dream. The musical score by Tom Pierson is diverse, from the opening which is like a faint piano plinking away at the keys like icy fingertips, to occasional outbursts of blaring horns that shock the system like a dive into frozen waters. The number "five" is ubiquitous in Quintet, from the eponymous game to the architecture and makeup of the city. Essex seeks out his brother by interpreting a series of large, glass maps fallen into disrepair. These maps are riddled with images of pentagons, which he informs Vivia represents the five different sectors housing the city's five million residents. When Essex finds his brother and tells him how he found him through this system, Francha is almost surprised because the thought of using this resource had not even occurred to him. This reaction speaks of a society that has become so ineffectual and decadent that they have lost the ability to understand the world around them, allowing themselves to indulge in playing games as they await death's embrace. Whatever hold Quintet has on the residents of the city is so powerful, that all other needs fall by the wayside, like the bodies that make feasts for the hounds.
Part of the reason that Essex adopts the role of the player who murdered his family is to understand why they had to die, while discovering just what kind of people are involved in the game. Essex crosses paths with most of the other players, including Deuca (Nina Van Pallandt), the icy proprietress of the hotel where he stays, and his neighbor, Ambrosia (Bibi Andersson), a charming and seemingly sweet woman who beats Essex in a practice game of Quintet, commenting that she is always stuck "playing the sixth man", which she considers "an advantage but boring". Essex becomes increasingly vigilant after he is approached by the suspicious Grigor who bursts into his room with a straight razor, then repeatedly and ominously refers to him as a friend from then on. Essex spies on Ambrosia through the air vent when she is confronted by a frantic player named Goldstar (David Langton), who is convinced that Ambrosia and Saint Christopher--whom Grigor seems to favor--are plotting against him. Essex soon understands that trust comes at a premium in this city, and that between a web of tenuous alliances and vague conspiracies, his own deceptions and secretive efforts to infiltrate the game have made him a full-fledged player of it.
Recommended for: Fans of a novel if bleak view of a future where mankind has consigned itself to damnation by giving up on life and embracing its vices rather than fighting to survive. Quintet is a visionary film with a clever motif--a game integrated into the plot that alludes to the plot of the thriller--featuring a diverse and talented international cast in an immersive (if hellish) setting.