Nashville

Nashville was the first "R" rated film that my father took me to see. At 14 years of age, I was many years from NYU film school, and a neophyte when it came to appreciating cinema.

I am now 39, and to date I have seen tens of thousands of films, not to mention possessing a sizable video library. Considering my love of social politics, there is not a month that goes by that I have not thought of this film for one reason or another. There are some movies that you simply see, and there are the rare few that become part of the soul.

Simply said, Nashville is a singular work of cinematic genius that has gone dreadfully under appreciated for the last 25 years. It is a film chock full of life's little (and not so little) truths; some happy, some sad...all meaningful.

Now that it is making a long overdue reappearance on DVD in it's original (and integral) widescreen format, it is my sincerest hope that people will avail themselves of the opportunity to discover this forgotten gem for themselves.

Lastly, that this film did not make the AFI's 100 great American films is an absolute sin.

Robert Altman's sprawling masterpiece is a brilliant look at not just America in the mid-70s, but a reflection of the nation we were to become. Set during a Presidential campaign it weaves themes both large and small. The U. S. was about to celebrate its Bicentennial. Watergate had forced Nixon to resign. The revolutionary 60s had become the Me decade.

Altman and writer Joan Tewkesbury created a mosaic to explore and provoke. NASHVILLE may be set against the worlds of politics and country music, but, it really isn't about either. It's about a nation that is divided along many lines right down to the individual.

The massive cast (24 'main' characters) includes supreme turns by Lily Tomlin, Ronee Blakely, Ned Beatty, Henry Gibson, Karen Black, Keith Carradine, Gwen Welles and more.

In a decade where Altman also made MASH, MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER and THE LONG GOODBYE he stood as tall as anyone of that era.

What a great film this was, with a huge cast and director like that you just cant miss. I was very surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did, knowing that I usually dont enjoy musicals or country music, but somehow this film was excellent!! Maybe it was the way we got to know all of those characters, especially Tomlin, who was phonomonal, and her relationship with that singer. So many familiar faces in this film also made it extremely exciting, Jeff Goldblum on that tricycle was hilarious. To sum it up, this film is a must see. 9 1/2 out of 10.

I suppose the brilliance of "Nashville" is that almost 30 years after its initial release, Robert Altman's slice of Americana has lost none of its punch. Despite being made in the Watergate and Vietnam era, the film remains relevant as ever.

In fact, one could argue, the film's even more relevant today in this age of celebrity-worship and apathetic, gutless American media who believe missing suburban wives are more pertinent and crucial to this nation's well-being than questioning facts and our leaders' motives for waging a needless, costly war.

The film's about the politics of country music, families, stardom, search for stardom, political manipulation and populist political candidates. The unseen presidential candidate's spiel in "Nashville" could easily have been sound bites from contemporary populists; he could be seen as the cinematic trend-setter for the Ross Perots, Jesse Venturas, Howard Deans and Ralph Naders.

The film is at once a political drama, musical and documentary all effortless woven together by a master storyteller, who truly is an American treasure. In "Nashville," Altman's overlapping dialogue works to perfection as he captures this panoramic view of five days in Nashville through the eyes of two-dozen characters.

With so many characters, it's Altman's genius that he keeps this an engrossing character study. Although he tosses aside all conventions of narrative storytelling, we get to know characters better in "Nashville" than we do in many contemporary dramas with fewer characters. There's Ronee Blakley's country singer; Lily Tomlin's doting housewife and mother; Scott Glenn's caring soldier; Keith Carradine's lecherous pop star; Ned Beatty's disinterested father; Keenan Wynn's loving husband; Michael Murphy's sleazy campaigner; and Gwen Welles' sad wannabe country singer, whose scene at a political fund-raiser is heartbreaking. And Jeff Goldblum's motorcyclist and Geraldine Chaplin's Opal are the threads that weave through all the lives in this marvelous tapestry.

There are plenty of terrific songs in "Nashville" - some might complain too many - but the best are Carradine's Oscar-winning "I'm Easy" and "It Don't Bother Me." They add to the nice sense of cynicism that layers the movie.

Altman's one of the big reasons the 1970s is regarded as the greatest decade of American filmmaking. Look at just a few of his contributions in that decade - "Nashville," "MASH" (1970), "Brewster McCloud" (1970), "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" (1971), "Images" (1972) and "The Long Goodbye" (1973). His films also influence other talented filmmakers, including Alan Rudolph (who worked on Altman films) and Paul Thomas Anderson, whose storytelling style - "Boogie Nights" (1997) and "Magnolia" (1999) - clearly is Altman-inspired.

I saw Nashville when it was first shown, billed as Altman's "birthday card" to America on the occasion of the bicentennial. The greatest tribute I can pay is that, despite its frequent shifts of location, many individual scenes and characterizations, as well as the overarching story line, remained vivid in my mind over the years before I was able to purchase the film on video. When I taught Film History at my college I used Nashville as the final examination for the course. After having viewed the film, students were instructed to identify the elements of film technique previously studied(such as overlapping dialogue, jump shots, widescreen, etc) in order to forward the narrative, as they were employed by Altman. In general, they did very well; even those who disliked the film. There are too many admirable performances for me to mention; however, those that remained most vivid in my mind over the years were those of Gwen Welles, Ronee Blakley, Henry Gibson, and Lily Tomlin. One last note of appreciation regards the fact that all the characters were introduced within the first twenty minutes at the airport; their personalities brought out in the highway scene;and their being brought together again, cyclically, during the last twenty minutes at the "Parthenon". It has been several years since I used Nashville for pedagogical purposes. When I purchased the DVD recently I found that, despite my numerous viewings and classroom analysis, the impact was virtually the same as when I first saw it in 1976. For me, it did not "murder to dissect" this personal milestone.