A year after director Robert Altman’s Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean – which followed a group of women reuniting after nearly 20 years and tracing the ways society, marriage, sexuality and mental health shaped their successive stories – was released, Altman put out his 21st film, Streamers. In many ways, the film takes a very similar approach to his previous work, though, on the surface, the films might seem very different. Come Back to the 5 & Dime tells the stories of women formerly in a James Dean fan club, while Streamers follows a group of men who are waiting to be sent off to the Vietnam War, spending their days conversing and interacting in the near empty sleeping quarters of their training camp. Tensions arise between the four main characters when topics like sexuality and racial differences become highlighted in their conversations and interactions.
Though the film attempts to be a character study of the four, the relatively uneventful plot, unlikeable characters and what feels like a lot of yelling and nonsensical back and forth all work to bog the film down. It results in a rather dreary viewing experience. In many ways, Streamers feels way too much like it was done as a live recording on the stage. The play was written by David Rabe, debuted off-Broadway in 1976, and was the third installment in the playwright’s trilogy of Vietnam War stories. Rabe also penned the screen adaptation. Aside from some banter in the adjoining bathroom and a quick bout of dialogue outside the barrack, the entirety of the film takes place between the bunk beds and lockers the men call home. The lack of setting changes in stories adapted from the stage is easily justified when done well, but physical movement isn’t the reason Streamers is so lackluster. That issue likely lies with production and time it was made. It’s reported that Altman himself financed the film – estimated to have cost about two million dollars – and did so without a distribution deal. After the critical failure of Popeye in 1980 and with the landscape where Altman made his name in Hollywood changing, the director was forced to make films that were quite different from his previous work for the rest of the decade. Projects with one set, lower-profile actors and stage adaptations were how he navigated the tumultuous time. Though Altman was able to find renewed success later with films like Gosford Park (2001), Streamers is close to the epitome of his lull in creative success after a particularly noteworthy period of critical acclaim. In Altman terms, it seems that Streamers’ opposite could be 1970’s M*A*S*H, a film focusing on American medical personnel stationed in Korea, though heavily influenced by the Vietnam War, ongoing at the time. Where M*A*S*H is considered a classic, Streamers could be disregarded.
The four men Streamers primarily follows are the middle-class Roger (David Alan Grier) and combative Carlyle (Michael Wright), the two Black men; Richie (Mitchell Lichtenstein), a New Yorker who is outed as gay, though the men use an array of terms like “punk” or “a queer” to describe homosexuality; and Billy (Matthew Modine), who is neither very accepting nor offensive but instead your more typical handsome, straight, white soldier from Wisconsin being sent off to war. After the opening scene, where two men set off an explosive device in the sleeping quarters and another enlistee slices his wrist to get out before being sent overseas, Richie helps bandage his wrists and takes him away. This begins one of many conversations between Billy and Roger about Richie’s sexuality. It’s also the first indication of Richie’s good intentions and everyone else’s general unlikability. Despite their suspicions and discussions about his sexuality, they aren’t particularly reactive when Richie jokes about Billy and his make-believe romantic flings (he actually has a full-blown crush). Streamers attempts to talk seriously about what it would be like to be a gay man serving in the military, but like most of its attempts at representation and social critique, it feels incomplete.
After about an hour and a half of conversation gracing topics like masculinity, race and the like, Carlyle, who spends a good portion of his time on screen drunk or just yelling, decides that he wouldn’t mind a sexual experience with another man: “I want my fucking nut! I want my nut, man!” Carlyle yells at Billy. In typical third act, military-and-testosterone-pumped fashion, it leads to an escalated confrontation between the characters. Carlyle ends up stabbing and killing both Billy and Cokes (George Dzundza) – another man in and out of the story in a lesser capacity. The men watch the killings in horror, and Carlyle flees with the murder weapon. Richie is distraught as he just watched the object of his affection murdered. When the medics and other military personnel arrive, they immediately try placing blame on either Richie, a fruitless accusation considering he was the one seeking medical help, or Roger, the other Black man. When Carlyle and the murder weapon are found just moments later, you’re relieved that neither of the other characters was found guilty, though it seems unrealistic for things to have worked out both justly and quickly.
When the final credits roll – both the opening and closing depict a military practice shrouded in heavy fog – you’ll likely feel relieved to have made it through. Streamers doesn’t succeed in having its characters brought together by their time serving (something other war films like Saving Private Ryan seem entirely focused on), nor is it able to make any profound commentary on the concepts of war, masculinity, race, or the United States military-industrial complex, a term that had just entered the lexicon roughly 20 years prior. The men debate toward the beginning whether they regret having enlisted, and they talk about their experiences around other gay and bisexual men at different points, but the conversations never really conjure anything productive or critical, even after having forgiven that the film turns 40 years old in 2023. In the end, after Billy’s death and Carlyle’s detention, you’d hope Richie and Roger will bond over the trauma just inflicted on them. Instead, Roger’s homophobia comes out in full, and he claims that the real reason Richie is crying over Billy’s death is not because of his feelings for him or even the fact that they just saw people murdered but that, bluntly, “he’s crying because he’s a queer.” Again, if commentary throughout Streamers had managed to establish a stronger narrative thread able to depict homophobia within enlistees and the military, the comment might feel profound, but after stumbling around with its themes for the duration, it’s just another eye-roll-inducing moment.
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