TANNER '88 DIRECTED BY ROBERT ALTMAN CRITERION "TAKE ADVANTAGE OF our presence and ...
Watching the collected episodes on the new Criterion DVD Tanner '88 (nearly six hours) puts shame on this year's outcropping of campaign documentaries. None has tended to the minutiae of modern American life with equal care or insight; instead, we've seen a field day of videomakers grinding out angles and axes. Episode 7, "The Girlfriend Factor," is a good illustration of why Tanner is extraordinary: At the point when the series' arc finds the liberal Democratic candidate involved in a possibly ruinous romance with a member of his rival candidate's campaign, Altman pushes the story forward, taking a detour into urgent reality. Tanner's campaign stop in Detroit exposes him first to the dehumanized auto industry, then to the blighted city streets where the local drug trade has declared war on the next generation.
Tanner goes before the real-life So-Sad organization (Save Our Sons and Daughters) and, rather than speechifying, lets these usually ignored Americans state their hopes. "It's the only way we can make a difference," Tanner says-speaking for Altman as well as himself. The result is a breathtaking moment of pop art that presents an American crisis and then looks respectfully, unflinchingly, at the actual human response.
As if to emphasize his often-overlooked modernism, Altman makes Tanner on Tanner as much about the clichés of supposedly up-to-the-minute technology as about the never-changing folly of human behavior. It's not prescience that matters, but perception-the way Tanner and his staff roll with the controversial issues. It's both an accurate account of how Americans continue to dodge political punches, and a bold lesson to media zealots who are less conscientious about how tv and video are manipulated. When Tanner's videographer, Deke (Matt Malloy), who edits porn in his day job, is chided for the noise coming from his monitor, he answers, "It's not porn, it's Garafolo." How's that for non-partisan?