Movie / Soundtrack Review: McCabe & Mrs Miller

A stranger arrives in a frontier town to open a brothel. He joins forces with a business savvy madam. The business thrives and when the stranger refuses a buyout from an outside conglomerate they send men to kill him. Beyond these simple plot points the narrative is slight and fractured; conversations in crowded rooms are half heard and characters are introduced only to disappear for long stretches of the film. We learn nothing of McCabe or Mrs. Miller beyond what we can infer from brief scenes that seem to be indiscriminately comprised of both the significant and irrelevant moments of their daily lives. As we struggle to parse out the meaningful moments from the inane, the common element between these scenes becomes the three songs by Leonard Cohen that accompany them all. We begin to make assumptions about the characters based on the lyrics that accompany their lives. “Winter Lady” plays and we see Mrs. Miller smoking opium behind locked doors, sought after by all her patrons but beyond any feeling or attachment. McCabe rides into town to “Stranger Song;” just a “Jacob looking for a manger,” he does little to disillusion the townspeople of their assumption that he’s an infamous gambler with a violent past. The town revolves around the bathhouse and, as “Sisters of Mercy” plays, the prostitutes – professionals imported by Mrs. Miller as well as local women compelled by circumstance – pleasure the rough and inarticulate men who are building the town amidst the falling snow. The music and the images become inseparable; there is something rustic and beautiful in the isolated and serene setting, but at the same time it is a place where pleasure is illusory; past decisions have doomed these men and women, and as they do their best to distract themselves amidst the steam and music of the dimly lit brothel we come to see their fates approaching all too clearly.