Streamers

Robert Altman directed this faithful 1983 production of David Rabe's award-winning play, shooting entirely on a single set with a small cast delivering lines from a script adapted by the playwright himself. Matthew Modine, Mitchell Lichtenstein, and David Alan Grier (in his screen debut) star as Billy, Richie, and Roger—young soldiers at the end of basic training waiting to get shipped to Vietnam in the early days of the war—who are impacted by the arrival of Carlyle (Michael Wright), an angry, anxious soldier. Guy Boyd and George Dzundza round out the main cast as heavy-drinking veterans. Streamers explores issues of homophobia, race, machismo, and simple fear that roil just beneath the joking, drinking, and horseplay. Altman employs the stylistic tools he mastered in his 1970s ensemble productions—the slow pans and subtle dolly shots, the patient zooms into telling details, editing that turns every scene into a mural—to create a kind of filmed theater that combines the intimacy of the stage with a cinematic expressiveness. In fact, Streamers remains both a vivid interpretation of the play and a compelling movie in its own right (it won an unprecedented six Golden Lions for Best Actor—one for each of the central cast members—at the Venice Film Festival in 1983). DVD extras include the retrospective documentary “Beautiful Streamers,” featuring new interviews with Modine, Lichtenstein, and Dzundza, plus interviews with Bruce Davidson and Herbert Jefferson Jr., who starred in the original New York stage production directed by Mike Nichols. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)