A Prairie Home Companion

Robert Altman's "A Prairie Home Companion" is light, fluffy and fun, much like the radio show. As long as audiences keep this in mind, they'll be sold like Rhubarb pie and duct tape advertised during the broadcast.

The outstandingly cast ensemble and Altman's signature directing style stitch a flowing patchwork of laughs and tinges of nostalgia. Streep and Tomlin are dynamic together (and sing beautifully!), and Kline carries much of the film's comedy on his capable shoulders. The film represents a bygone era that the people of the show are still living in. Only Virginia Madsen, Lindsay Lohan and Tommy Lee Jones represent the outsiders to the otherwise coherent culture of the show, and as the film progresses, affect it and are affected by it in different ways.

I generally prefer films, however comic or fun they are, to have some deeper themes. But unlike the multi-layered theater that most of the film takes place in, there's nothing really behind the scenes here- it's art for arts sake. However, I still enjoyed the film and am actually relieved it didn't bog down in anything too serious.

Whether audiences are fans of the radio show or not, the film's worth its weight in Narco Bran Flakes.

Who knew that Lindsay Lohan could deliver a performance of this caliber? My friends and I, all movie aficionados, were stunned by her performance, albeit a supporting role. I never EVER thought I would utter those words. As mentioned earlier, Lohan's real acting debut is here.

Still, her's is highlighted by a magnificent ensemble, particularly Tomlin and Streep, who give dazzling performances. After all these years, they've still got it- and Tomlin, an Altman favorite, is particularly up to par with the snap-and-go dialogue.

As always, his direction must be taken with a grain of salt- you either love him or hate him, but the performances are what make this film soar.

Kudos!

Have you ever been in a situation where you know a person who moves with grace? He or she may not be a particularly interesting person, nor even a bit of a soulmate. But you like to be near them because they move with such deliberation and beauty that they animate and enlighten the architecture, they bless the space you breath with your eyes. You look forward to your next meeting because you yearn that space.

Altman is like that for me. He isn't about deliberation or noodling around with reality. He's quite simply the most graceful, natural mover I know in cinema. And it isn't just his age, he started this notion as far back as "McCabe," which I recently said was my favorite western when someone insisted on such a recommendation.

Part of his fluidity is a conviction that the art is in arranging the mix, the vortex, before that camera is unpacked. Once it happens, all he has to do is discover it as the actors push the space around. Its shocking what he does because it differs so much from the norm, which usually frames things spatially so the camera can see them.

Part of it has to do with the projects he chooses: meandering stories, folded and separate. Dozens of characters, perhaps. Sometimes, its not obvious, as when he wanders among suspects in "Gosford." Garrison Keillor is a master storyteller, based on one trick, but what a trick! The whole show revolves around his fictional Lake Wobegon which by accretion in our mind is a place with dozens of characters, places and rituals that we know. He'll start a narrative thread for few moments, toying with a certain foible, then as if he lost his focus, he'll take the tail of that morsel as a springboard for a different thread. It may seem to have a similar moral or not. It may have related characters or not. It may even involve a different time. The humor is in the lost threads, the jumps, the lucid fog.

His best rambles may span four of five of these and never return, deliberately never return. Its as if he starts with a treetrunk — the town and its collective zeitgeist — and follows a branch and then hops among leaves like a story squirrel.

Altman is just the opposite. He starts with the leaves and by circumnavigating the crown of the thing he implies an arboreal being. With his birth and modeling films for example, that being isn't so interesting, instead its the grace of the squirrel's eye that amazes us.

So its no surprise that there is no Wobegon story here. This is Altman's dance imposed on Keillor's. They both know it, and Keillor's role is one he does play in the radio show, as a sort of peg around which the Maydayers swirl.

So see this for the dance, the two master dancers but one dance. Along the way, you'll see Streep as you never have before. She's so effortless here. Its obvious that she created her character (and with the others, this is so). Her character is a swimmer in a sea of emotion. She's wet with stories, and we find that she was one of Keillor's. Its too sweet an idea, knowing what sort of an actor she is and how she applies a sort of iron-willed discipline to what she does which we don't notice because of her absolute commitment. But the world in the long run doesn't love these types.

They love the ones that jump in without a plan, that are broken from the last dive but leap again. Its a new Streep we see here. Leaves, wet with the tears of life, ready to fall as her storyteller lights past.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

As usual Altman will divide his audience in a radical way. He, clearly, doesn't do it on purpose but it happens more often than not with the works of real artists where there is no room (or very little) for concessions. It is what it is, his vision, his whole. He mentioned that the film was about death and found that not everyone agreed not even some of his closest and more devoted collaborators. That's what he saw, that's what it is but it's bound to be contradicted by critics and audiences alike. Personally, I don't think I'll see a better film this year. The work of an idiosyncratic artist and masterful craftsman doesn't hit the main stream screens every day of the week. My only reservation is that the film is too short. I wanted to go on and on and on. To say that Meryl Streep is sublime seems kind of redundant but never mind, she is, sublime, surprising, funny, very funny, moving, very, very moving. Lily Tomlin and Meryl have the best moments in the film. They appear, look and sound as if they had been working together all their lives. Total chemistry. Lindsay Lohan is the biggest surprise. Good for her. That's the way to forge a way ahead. Work with the best. Woody Harrelson and John C Reilly are simply glorious. Kevin Kline does a Kevin Kline in the most enchanting way. It was also a delight to see Garrison Keillor himself playing himself, not just wonderfully but very convincingly as well. I recommend it with all my heart.

I thought this was a great kind of love letter to the radio show of the past,, but as a movie it kind of left wanting something that I wasn't getting. The cast is incredible,, but with such an incredible cast I expected some story beyond what was given. I may have completely missed something between the lines,, but I'd say this one is just good,, not great. It's perfectly worth watching,, just don't expect a lot of story.