Robert Altman is as varied as he is polarizing, and while it is easy to spot the feel of an Altman film, it was always difficult to predict what genre his next effort would fit in. It's hard to run through MASH, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Nashville, Popeye, The Long Goodbye, and Ready to Wear, and have any idea what you'll get at the next point in the chain.
Adding to the complexity are several films that don't fit well into a category or genre themselves. One of his most interesting, Brewster McCloud, is such a film.
A curious, bookish boy with significantly large glasses, Brewster (Bud Cort) lives in the fallout shelter of the Houston Astrodome. Watched over, in a strange and often uncomfortable sense, by the mysterious Louise (Sally Kellerman), Brewster's life is consumed by a quest to fly.
The film's structure is as difficult to describe as it may be sit through, with a lecture on birds overplaying scenes which describe parallel human/bird behavior. The lecturer (Rene Auberjonois) slowly becomes a bird (sort of), perhaps as a secondary shot to part of the film's overall themes - how it is we become whatever it is we become.
Providing part of our focus, and much of the distraction, is the hunt for a serial strangler, and the hotshot detective who is called in from out of town to help in the investigation. Lt. Frank Shaft (brilliantly portrayed by Michael Murphy) is a stereotype run wild. A cop so cool he cannot be bothered to skip neatly unpacking his dizzying array of fine sweaters when coming to town on what is perhaps the nation's most serious manhunt, he can only find time to talk about catching criminals, and isn't interested in policy or politics. Mind you, he coordinates his shoulder holster when picking out his outfit, but he's only interested in catching bad guys.
Meanwhile, Brewster is not to be diverted from his mission. One that is clearly the construct of the uber-maternal Louise. He must fly. More specifically, he must fly away. Not to a particular destination, just away from this nonsense. In his strange fallout shelter home, he builds his wings. One day, if he manages to avoid the distractions of the outside world....
Distractions possibly of a variety offered by Astrodome tour guide Suzanne (Shelly Duvall in her first appearance, having been discovered while locations were being scouted).
Brewster McCloud is a modern fairy tale, but one that mixes film's abilities as a medium with a very old school idea of what fairy tales are. It is not the Grimm stories as you might buy them today, but as they were written, with morals that are less than clear, and too many of them to work out anyway. It is from that class where ugliness is ugly, and rather than shying away from the brutality of life, we treat it with something more akin to the detachment we reserve for all things that are uninterestingly common.
It is hard to ferret out whether or not the tale is cautionary in some way (because, in what way?) or simply descriptive. Vaguely about the human condition by way of someone trying to remove themselves from it (aren't we all?), it would be hard to put together a one-sentence moral ala Aesop, but when your most heroic efforts at freedom find you trapped as much by your own theory as by the societal constructs you run from, it is difficult to know whether to laugh or cry.
Rating: 
The remastered DVD release looks remarkable, but in such a way that may be hard to realize without comparing it to a non-remastered release of a film also from at least 1970. The colors standout better than you'd expect, and the overall clarity is probably better than ever before. Almost detrimentally so, because I don't remember the strings being quite so obvious before.
There are no special features, other than the trailer, and while some effort there would have been nice, it is a film that doesn't really need them.
Available: Exclusively on WarnerArchive.com: http://bit.ly/WAC_Brewster
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About Marc Eastman
Marc Eastman is the owner and operator of Are You Screening? and has been writing film reviews for over a decade, and several branches of the internet's film review world have seen his name. His reviews have brought him personal praise from the director of a major motion picture, and have been used as required reading in a course at a major University. These priceless rewards, along with just bags of cash, keep him from straying from freelance writing. He is also a member of The Broadcast Film Critics Association and The Broadcast Television Journalists Association.
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