Brewster McCloud (1970)

Flapping Against Apollo - Brewster McCloud review by griggs

Some films lure you in with the promise of a goofy romp, only to reveal a cracked mirror held up to their own era. Brewster McCloud looks like a stoner comedy, with Bud Cort skulking around the Houston Astrodome building wings so he can fly, but Robert Altman has something stranger in his mind. Beneath the feathers and pratfalls is an allegory about America’s bruised idealsim at the dawn of the ‘70s.

Flight itself is the key metaphor: Brewster’s dream of escape is both Icarus and counterculture, a soaring vision destined to nosedive. ANd when you place that dream under the Astrodome—nicknamed the “Eight Wonder of the World” and built in Houston, home to NASA’s Mission Control—it reads like a sly commentary on the space race. Astronauts in space suits were celebrated as national heroes, Brewster is a pale misfit flapping about in feathers under a dome, dreaming of his own launch. His DIY contraption is the anti-Apollo racket: fragile, personal, and doomed to collapse. America got its moon landing; Brewster got his crash.

Around him swirl grotesque and running gags—cops splattered before their comeuppance, Michael Murphy lampooning macho detectives, Sally Kellerman gliding in as a fallen angel, and Shelley Duvall (in her debut) adding a sweet, loopy counterpoint. Altman ties it all together with the circus finale, a Brechtian shrug at America’s pageant of failure and sbsurdity.

Brewster McCloud is messy, funny, and oddly haunting—an allegory with wings too fragile to soar, offering a crash where America promised a giant leap.