California Split (1974, Robert Altman) (Patreon)

82/100

Second viewing, last seen 2002. No idea why this failed to knock me out back then—I was already 34, with my taste pretty firmly established and well over a dozen Altman films under my belt, and was even starting to get seriously interested in poker right around that time. Best guess, though this would truly shame me (and I don't remember, to be clear): Maybe I was somehow confounded rather than exhilarated by the ending, and left the theater feeling vaguely dissatisfied. Surely it can't be the case that I didn't thoroughly enjoy these two magnificently dissolute performances, or the way that they fuse to fashion a freewheeling portrait of male camaraderie that's at once amusing and disturbing. Gould's in peak insouciant form here, and Segal ideally complements him by oscillating between fretful and unguarded, according to circumstance—a conventional cause/effect emotional spectrum that his final scene utterly lays to waste. And while there's a familiar compulsive-gambling narrative at play, rooted in perhaps the most accurate depiction of California cardrooms and casinos in cinema history (though poker players no longer actually deal when they have the dealer button), Altman maintains a gratifying lack of interest in keeping Bill's escalating desperation on track. Even during its climactic hot-streak sequence, California Split stays laser-focused on character dynamics; the camera keeps wandering away from Bill either winning or losing large sums of money (it's frequently unclear which) to watch Charlie fidgeting at a nearby table, frustrated at being temporarily out of action. The film's on weaker ground when integrating women (and I could live without the scene in which Charlie and Bill terrify an indeterminately genderqueer* individual, just for laughs; it's a mean-spirited hiccup that feels out of place irrespective of the era), but still manages to make that oddball living arrangement feel entirely credible in every stray detail.

For all of the above praise, though, it really is the ending that makes California Split indelible, whether or not I appreciated that 20 years ago. Movies about gamblers tend to function as a subset of addiction dramas in general, following a predictable trajectory: steadily downward, albeit usually with at least one miraculous windfall that gets handed right back as the protagonist, now convinced that he can't lose (and needing a constant fix of recklessness, in any case), just keeps on playing against odds that are always cruel in the long run. It's very hard to make that play as much more than a slow, inevitable bummer that resembles every other slow, inevitable bummer you've seen...and it's no good flipping the script, either, as a happy ending would feel fraudulent. Altman and/or screenwriter Joseph Walsh found another way—one that lets us exult in Bill and Charlie's improbable good fortune, then acknowledges their euphoria's fleeting nature in the starkest way possible. It's a variation on the Graduate ending, now that I think about it, and similarly devoid of psychological cues; I kinda wish that Charlie didn't say "It don't mean a fuckin' thing, does it?", as even that's more than we need. (Helps that it's a brief jab of self-awareness for the less introspective character.) Just the cross-cutting between Charlie cashing in his chips at the cage, chatting up a gleeful storm, and Bill sitting alone at an unused zodiac roulette(?)** table, miraculously solvent*** but utterly empty, was enough to tie knots in my own stomach. Has he become conscious of how easily it could have gone the other way? (The closest we get to an explanation is Bill telling Charlie "There was no special feeling. I just said there was.") Is he already looking ahead to a grim future, recognizing that this big win will only enable even bigger losses? Or does he simply feel nothing, apart from the misery of still being himself? Wisely, the movie declines to speculate. We're just left to sit with the victory's hollowness and ponder our own luck, both good and bad, and its meaning, or conspicuous lack thereof. 

* It's obvious which word would've been used in 1974, and I'm sure nobody involved, including the actor, gave it any more thought than that. But still. 

** I'm unfamiliar with what Charlie spins as he exits: a vertical Wheel of Fortune-style deal marked with both numbers and astrological signs. Quick google search didn't turn up anything useful.  

*** They win $41K each, which today would be about $250K apiece. It's nearly house-buying money.