A fond farewell, wrapped in Altman's familiar fashion

"I think all my films are just one film," director Robert Altman said in an Entertainment Weekly interview earlier this year. "I really do. They're just chapters."

"A Prairie Home Companion," in theaters last summer, turned out to be the final chapter in the great American filmmaker's long career: Altman died last Monday of complications due to cancer, at the age of 81. His life's work ended on a musical note, with a chorus of actors (including Lily Tomlin, who'd made her film debut in Altman's "Nashville" 32 years ago) crooning "In the Sweet Bye and Bye" as the film faded away. As in "Nashville," music united the film's motley cast of characters; by the end, they were in harmony.

It seems fitting somehow that Altman would leave this particular film as his last. Inspired by Garrison Keillor's folksy public-radio program, Altman's "Prairie Home Companion" is ultimately an elegy: a group of people doing what they love one more time before saying goodbye. In trademark Altmanesque fashion (yes, he was one of the few directors to merit his own adjective, like "Hitchcockian"), their stories and conversations overlapped and intertwined, tripping and spilling into each other in a messy way that seemed remarkably like real life. And the film had a tone of sweet resignation to it; shining through was a tribute to music as a healing bond, and a serene Midwestern (Altman was from Kansas City, Mo.) acceptance of life as a series of goodbyes.

Since his first hit film, 1970's "MASH," Altman worked constantly, always outside the studio system. (All of his films were independently financed.) In the '70s alone, he released 13 features, including those that first made his name: "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," an idiosyncratic and strangely haunting tale of the Old West, and the country-music tapestry that was "Nashville," in which a dizzying number of characters intersected against the backdrop of a benefit concert.

In subsequent decades, he never slowed down. Not every movie he made was a classic, and some were downright bad (anyone else remember "Beyond Therapy"?), but he kept exploring different genres, less interested in storytelling than in exploring the boundaries of character and acting.

In the '90s came a pair of films that epitomized his ensemble-cast approach: "The Player," a crackling, pitch-black satire of Hollywood, and "Short Cuts," which movingly interwove a collection of Raymond Carver stories. His gift of gathering a myriad of stories had become second nature; you forget, watching these films, how difficult the task was. Many have attempted to imitate the Altmanesque style; few achieve it — for Altman, it was the result of a lifetime of working with actors and writers, finding a conversation's rhythm.

In interviews, Altman's actors would explain that the scenes were mostly scripted, but while watching, you believed it was all being said for the first time. Real life never has the tidiness of a screenplay, and Altman's films strove to find the way we really talk to each other — a pair of siblings who speak in the shorthand of a lifetime of togetherness, a husband and wife who no longer listen to the other's words.

Altman's career seemed revitalized in recent years: "Gosford Park," an intricate British upstairs/downstairs drama, was a triumph of character study; "The Company," an almost plotless tale of life in a contemporary ballet company, buzzed with the youthful enthusiasm of a filmmaker falling in love with dance. At 81, he was at work on a new film that was to begin shooting in February. But it's hard to imagine a more appropriate note to go out on than that last scene of "Prairie Home Companion," with those voices blending on "we shall meet on that beautiful shore," as the characters joyously danced away, out of camera's range.

Looking back on his career while accepting his one and only Oscar (an honorary award) earlier this year, Altman compared making a film to making a sand castle at the beach. (His production company, appropriately, was called Sandcastle 5 Productions.) "You invite your friends and you get them down there, and you say you build this beautiful structure, several of you. Then you sit back and watch the tide come in. Have a drink, watch the tide come in, and the ocean just takes it away. And that sand castle remains in your mind. Now I've built about 40 of them, and I never tire of it."

Actually, many of those sand castles — standing, perhaps, on that beautiful shore — will last forever.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com