January 14, 2015, 7:00 p.m. — The Company (2003)
The Company
2003. USA. Directed by Robert Altman. Screenplay by Barbara Turner, based on a story by Turner and Neve Campbell. With Campbell, Malcolm McDowell, James Franco. The travails of an ambitious ballerina (Campbell, who also coproduced the film) serve as the foreground for this portrait of the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago, filmed over the course of a year and featuring real Joffrey dancers. The Company is a film about the creative process itself, aptly rendering the painstaking discipline, tireless work, and personal sacrifice demanded of the dancers, and the transcendent result that is collective performance. These challenges parallel those Altman faced over four decades as a filmmaker; Roger Ebert declared it “the closest that Robert Altman has come to making an autobiographical film.” 35mm print courtesy the Robert Altman Collection at the UCLA Film Television Archive. 112 min.
