[It] is impossible to evaluate Altman's artistic decisions … without some sense of the vision which those decisions attempt to clarify. California Split is perhaps the most literal, explicit treatment to date of Altman's perennial concern: the relation between risk and belief.

In one way or another, all of Altman's movies are about the necessary risk involved in any attempt to enact an imaginative vision and, thereby, to extend the limits of the "real." The sliding fluidity of reality, its status as a reflector of consciousness, is probably most apparent in his "gothic thriller," Images. Altman's premise is that reality is a function of consciousness: if we feel imprisoned, an act of consciousness, a risk of the imagination, may set us free. But such a risk demands belief: therefore his movies are also about the single-minded, committed faith which transcendence necessitates. (pp. 11-12)

[Altman's heroes] are all at work...