Здоровье (HealtH): Сатира Роберта Альтмана на политику и здоровый образ жизни

1980 ensemble comedy film directed by Robert Altman

HealtH (also known as Health and H. E. A. L. T. H.) is a 1980 American ensemble comedy film, the fifteenth feature project from director Robert Altman. It stars Carol Burnett, Glenda Jackson, James Garner, Lauren Bacall, and Paul Dooley, and was written by Altman, Dooley and Frank Barhydt. The film's title is an acronym for "Happiness, Energy, and Longevity through Health". A parody and satire of the U. S. political scene of the time, HealtH is set at a health food convention at a Florida luxury hotel, where a powerful political organization is deciding on a new president. The election is rife with backroom deals and scandal; a businessman, Colonel Cody, is out to rig the votes and the outcome. Dick Cavett and Dinah Shore, two television talk show personalities of the time, are mentioned prominently in the film. HealtH was made by Robert Altman's company, Lion's Gate Films (no relation to Lionsgate Films), in early 1979. It was the director's last film for the 20th Century Fox studio, which shelved its official release for over two years. along with a plotless structure, HealtH chronicles the progress of a health food convention held at a luxury hotel in St Pete Beach, Florida. As the convention takes place, the members of an organization called HealtH hold a campaign to find out who will become its President. (Their name stands for "Happiness, Energy and Longevity through Health";

On the first day of the conference, The Steinettes (a female quartet dressed in green and yellow) introduce Dick Cavett, who is hosting his show on location and covering the details of the event. He interviews Gloria Burbank and Esther Brill, two of the candidates competing for the new Presidency of the HealtH organization. Burbank, a White House representative, has been sent to this venue on the President of the United States' behalf. Later that day at the hotel lounge, Burbank's ex husband Before he and the candidates leave, Cavett briefly greets Dinah Shore, the host on hand for this event. who are dressed in different outfits during the convention. Gerard Plecki calls their songs "ironic commentary on the health crisis implied in the film". "[Alan] had great faith in me," he told David Sterritt in 2000; "he put his own job on the line." the Don CeSar Beach Hotel in St Pete Beach, Florida. The crew chose the Don CeSar, said Altman, because "we felt [this] would be fun, with lots of crazy situations and off beat characters." Robert Altman was known to wear different hats on every new production of his; on the set of HealtH, he wore a straw one. and had to pay "outrageous salaries" for certification. A short while after HealtH finished production, producer Robert Evans hired Altman for a musical version of Popeye, co produced by Paramount Pictures and Walt Disney Productions. and brought the Steinettes from HealtH along with him. But by the time editing was complete, they moved it to their summer schedule; After filming Popeye, Altman tried to contact Norman Levy on its status. The filmmaker complained, "[Levy] didn't return my phone calls for seven weeks. That's just basic rudeness. I don't think he knows what a movie is anyway." and later appeared at Telluride in Westwood, Los Angeles; Despite even worse acclaim this time, The film also received a screening in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 28. and in the United Kingdom, where prints ran a few minutes longer than the original U. S. cut. and also on the national U. S. outlet The Movie Channel that same year. As of 2010, a widescreen version has been shown on basic cable's Fox Movie Channel. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has not released the film on VHS, DVD or Blu ray. At the time of the Film Forum premiere, The New York Times' Vincent Canby wrote: "HealtH is, I suppose, a mess, but it is a glorious one in the recognizable manner of a major film maker who sometimes gets carried away—by his subject, by his own enthusiasms and those of his actors, and by the collaborative creative process he loves. As do so many of his films, HealtH gives one the feeling of being on a nonstop party with the people who made it." He added that it "is no masterpiece, but it is one of the most appealing entertainments that Mr. Altman has ever put together". The Film Bulletin called it a "misfired satire", and commented that its "major stars [ ] are otherwise wasted". In a 1985 book on Altman, Gerard Plecki called HealtH "a humorous companion piece to Nashville", adding that it "was certainly a major improvement over his two previous films". On the other hand, director Martin Scorsese named it one of the "85 Films You Need to See to Know Anything about Film".

Since its release, HealtH has been viewed as a parody, and satire, of the U. S. political scene at the time of its filming; critic Daniel O'Brien also noticed "the parallels between the [HealtH] election and the U. S. Presidency explicitly spelt out (several times)" in the film. In his book A Cinema of Loneliness, Robert Phillip Kolker stressed this aspect, writing that "Altman creates a world that is a parody of a political phenomenon that is itself already a parody of show business, for political conventions always mediate the realities of power with the signifiers of spectacle. [HealtH] is, finally, a representation of a representation." Kolker also observed Altman's use of the carnivalesque, a style from Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin that the filmmaker employed in many of his productions. O'Brien called this the film's "strongest asset [ ], complete with hucksters and suckers (a handy metaphor for most aspects of American society". In Kolker's words, HealtH is "a hilarious documentation of politics and culture at the end of the Carter era when passivity began to disguise itself as self satisfaction and marginal interests requested majority attention". The convention in the film "becomes a small mirror of larger political follies, of silly, self serving people so convinced of their importance that they take for granted the fact that major significance attends their ridiculous activities". O'Brien noted that in HealtH, "most of the main characters exhibit the expected Altman eccentricites", including the candidates in the election. "All this comes across as a little forced," he continued, "recalling the random weirdness of Brewster McCloud rather than the carefully etched idiosyncrasies of The Long Goodbye or Three Women." Moreover, someone says "Hit it!" just before the convention band replaces the opening Fox fanfare.