Oh, this is still happening. Weird. The idea was probably supposed to choke on its own breath never to return. But here we are.

This time it’s Leonard Cohen, with arguably his best song ever. No, it’s not “Hallelujah,” you bonesacks, it’s “Stranger Song.” This masterpiece happens to also be attached to what some think is the best Robert Altman film ever, McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971). Snow falls lightly throughout most of McCabe, but it’s oppressive en masse. It colors this film as in arguably no other Western (except maybe John Ford’s The Searchers in 1956) and it helps the film remind you that there was a frontier of culture and commerce and violence in the NorthWest, too, that looked nothing like that gold-and-orange-scape that shows up in most films about Western America, even today. McCabe was filmed in West Vancouver, Canada, and the remoteness, sparseness, and starkness of this location is a major feature of Altman’s film. Some film school hump might argue (or have argued back when he gave a single fuxk about such things) that McCabe holds up today in particular as an excellent alternative to the Western mythos - the idea of some macho, gunslinging hero type of which certainly there were fewer than there were squirrely, crafty McCabe types.

Put another way, John Wayne wouldn’t last a minute in McCabe. He’s too…what’s the word, here…full of shit? Too macho? Too brave? The first time he tried to drawl his way through a monologue with some cowering McCabe character they’d pill him in the gut before he could finish. Mighta gone something like this:

• int. dark bar, much murmuring
• Jake Baggett
• Listen here, Pilgrim, if you wanna slither in the sand like a –
• a shot is fired into Baggett's throat. Fin.

¹ Sidebar re:Pilgrim?

Anyway, it just all seems so fitting: Altman’s films (and McCabe in particular) basically play out like gloomy arpeggio folk guitar songs, with lots of busy sound that collectively texture the entire work. Cohen’s song (the original recording, in particular) has this in spades and the cumulative effect makes serious weight. McCabe has plenty of charm from Beatty himself, the dialogue, and the landscape, but in the end what you’re seeing is the frightening, sudden disappearance of a person, almost literally lost in the Western landscape. Likewise, “Stranger Song” is full of characters who are on this or that side of being lost themselves. On purpose, one has to presume.

MAPPING IT

It would be nice to position that exact spot where the snow blustered over a certain character’s slumped body – beautiful! – but filming locations shouldn’t count. Let’s back out and just use the entirety of West Vancouver (lifted from OSM).

HEARING IT

So enjoy Cohen’s “The Stranger Song” from Songs of Leonard Cohen, 1967. And then for additional exposition about Altman & Vancouver: this essay by Michael Turner about Altman’s two Vancouver films (the other is That Cold Day in the Park (1969)).