It’s been forty years since Director Robert Altman brilliant anti-war film “Mash” burst upon the culture. Starring Elliott Gould, Donald Sutherland, Tom Skerritt and Sally Kellerman as Army doctors and nurses toiling to save lives on the Korean front — the film was a stand-in for the still-raging Vietnam War. And while we never see any real battles, the blood-soaked operating rooms and the dark humor made us understand the true horror of war, while the freewheeling humor and farcical quality of the film kept us laughing. Last Saturday,before a packed house,  the Film Society of Lincoln Center at the Walter Reade Theatre  — as part of its 75th  anniversary celebration of the Twentieth Century Fox Studio — and the film’s 40th anniversary, unveiled its newly restored version.   And though much time has passed, it didn’t  seem that all that much had changed.  War is still hell and maybe the best way to show its absurdity is though farce and through laughter.
Afterward two of the film’s stars – Elliott Gould and Tom Skerritt – along with Kathryn Reed Altman, the director’s widow, spoke about what it was like to work with Robert Altman.  One word kept coming up – all through the conversation. “Magic.”    “Working with Bob (Altman) was magical” Gould said. “He had life. He was able to show the processes of life,” he said. “He was like a great conductor drawing these incredible performances out of us,” he said. “He allowed us — he allowed me to express our true natures.” There are no words to describe something that was just a feeling – a way of working,” Skerritt added, who also confirmed that the film really was about Vietnam. “We all knew it — it’s all that we thought about,” he said.

Orson Welles, 1937

    In 1937, a mad  genius stood poised, ready to unleash his vision on the world. The Crazy Genius was Orson Welles — and his production of  Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’  at his newly created Mercury Theatre in New York City would bring him infamy and opportunity.  Filmmaker Richard Linklater brings the period — and the genius  to life in his new film ‘‘Me and Orson Welles.’
    Based on the coming -of -age novel by Robert Kaplow,  Linklater  shows us all the fun, craziness, treachery and heartbreak that came under the rubric: A Life in the Theatre  — especially if it involved the Boy Wonder who was Orson Welles in 1937.
      We get the backstage intrigue, the romances and Welles as a kind of sometimes benign, sometimes cruel dictator/director. He wanted results and adoration — didn’t hesitate to cut anyone who didn’t give him enough of either.  British actor Christian McCay, who stars as Welles, nails the director’s brilliance — as well as his ability to manipulate and seduce.
       Zac Efron is touchingly vulnerable as Richard Samuels,  the high school kid who stumbles on a rehearsal at the Mercury and gets a small part in the production.  At the end, after Samuels has tasted some success, some betrayal, and some joy, he tells his friend, Gretta, who has dreams of being a writer: “It feels like we have everything before us…..” The camera pulls back in a gesture of joy and acknowledgement.   That everything would eventually come to mean World War  II — and for Welles — more masterpieces, fame, financial ruin — and a haunting memory of a sled called Rosebud.  But in that moment, for those characters — the world was alive  — with possibility and with hope. 

  Finding Magic

        Binoche, who has had a spectacular career, working with directors as varied as Kieslowski, Godard,  never thought about being a dancer. But at age 43, after answering her masseuse’s question: Do you Want to Dance? — she embarked on this project.
      But stretching boundaries is what she is all about.
      In an interview with writer  Faith Salie for  Double X,  she said she tries to stay away from labels. “I  try not to call myself [anything], because otherwise you get stuck into ideas.  Getting into other fields, worlds—it gives me certain freedom, and at the same time it shows me my limits, my pain.
       ”We have a tendency because of fear or of a lack of imagination to be out of tune with the truthful, magical side [of our bodies,” she told Salie.  And I have to say that if I didn’t get through that experience, I wouldn’t have discovered my energy—what the Chinese people call qi, you know the tai chi, the qi gong. I would say it is a sign of what the body has, which is the energy that you can’t see but you can feel.”
Finding Dreams
       Fearless  would be one word that would describe her.
       She posed naked for Playboy at the age of 43 and  while she doesn’t think she will keep dancing, she told Double X, she hs been transformed by having had the experience.  ” Dancing taught me to go for my dreams. And not to judge my dreams from outside, just to do it.”
    “In-I” will run through Sept. 26 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and is paired with a retrospective of her films at BAMCinematek: “Rendez-Vous With Juliette Binoche” through Sept. 30. Her paintings will be on display at the Cultural Services of the French Embassy at 972 5th Avenue through Oct. 9.