In all his recent films, including A Wedding, Robert Altman has made the kind of satire that delivers a big, round-house right to the whole society. Only a director capable of great economy as a story-teller—Orson Welles is another—can do satire on this epic scale. Just as Welles was able in Citizen Kane to describe the entire course of a marriage in a few snippets of conversation at the breakfast table, so Altman can neatly create the personalities of a half dozen characters at a time. Both directors are masters of the vignette. When Altman's wedding party returns from the ceremony to the reception at the house, for instance, Altman just sends everyone off to the bathroom. As people cue up to use the facilities, in that little tension between a formal occasion and everyone's bodily functions, Altman can establish in a gesture or exchange of...