Nashville

Let's get the obvious out of the wa first. Nashville is a Robert Altman film and that's as close to a guarantee of a well directed, well acted film as one's likely to find in 70's cinema. However Nashville is also an almost three hour film and for its duration and amount of talent involved the payoff is not what one would expect.

Now what is it that we all look for in movies of Nashville's calibre? Why do we ask in exchange for our money and undivided attention to the screen? I'd say it's little moments of insight; into ourselves, human nature, the world by and large. Nashville has them. So what's the problem you say? The problem is that they're buried and suffocating under the enormous weight of the rest of the movie, a barrage of country and western songs, five or ten actors crammed in every other shot, three or four people talking one over the other, a narrative slump of miniplots that criss cross in every scene. Typical Altman quirks yes but here they trump what in other cases they help surface: substance.

The double axis Nashville revolves around is music and politics. An interesting combination subject in and off itself. Altman follows a reverse process, he wisely takes these two universal concepts and limits their scope significantly, music becomes the country scene of Nashville and politics a political convention of the Replacement Party. Altman lets the universal spring from the specific, for in the end of the day, despite man's countless efforts to prove the opposite, we have more in common than not. A naive, almost pathetic waitress's dream of becoming a country singer should resonate as powerfully in every culture. In that sense Nashville is more about human beings, their dreams, ambitions, secrets and inadequacies than it is about music or politics.

The politics part of Nashville is handled equally breezy and smart. Politics is largely an abstract concept for the average person, an unseen, unknown force that magically appears in television screens, newspapers and radios and governs our lives. Altman translates that same essence in the form of a political campaign van that appears throughout the movie, the unseen speaker making promises of change with a monotonous voice. The actual presidential candidate he represents never appears in the movie. He remains elusive and unseen.

However well crafted and intelligent in the handling of theme Nashville may be, in the end it's those little moments of insight into human nature that count. The charming, young country singer talking on the phone with his girlfriend while the older, married woman he just had sex with prepares to leave the room, unable to hear what is being said. The husband of said married woman who has his suspicions about the strange phonecalls his wife receives hits on the naive waitress that wants to be a star. The waitress whose lack of talent is only surpassed by her naive ambition that is driven to do a striptease in a room full of men with the promise of singing with country star Baby Jane. Baby Jane is a popular and beautiful country star only on the outside, on the inside she's fragile, neurotic and empty.

The problem with Nashville is that those little moments of insight are dwarfed by the entirety of the movie. Many of the singing scenes for example should have been left on the cutting room floor - not everyone is a country fan after all, "we get the gist now move on". In the end the way I see it is that if I'm gonna give you almost three hours of my life, you better have something really important to say. Nashville is only mildly important and not as entertaining as it would have you believe.

Nashville has 24 "main" characters and I didn't care about a single one! The movie is overstuffed and mostly boring, the characters aren't that interesting (except maybe 1 or 2 of them) and it's really hard to keep up what's going on. Most of the time I was like wait who are you again? The second part of the movie was much better and some character development was happening, I also loved the ending! This is my first Altman but I'm excited to watch more of his movies.

Director Robert Altman impressed me with this two earlier directorial efforts M.A.S.H and McCabe and Mrs. Miller, but I believe he really comes into his own with 1975's Nashville. The way he directed his movie and the way he made it a very intelligent movie with many important themes but can be understood by the general public is just outstanding. However, if you don't keep up with the movie, you can be sure to get lost in the overload of information Altman throws at you. On paper, the film may seem like a mess but it's really not. The film really does not have an overall plot, but it has interwoven segments that are related with each other and I'll discuss a little bit later on. This film is full of unique performances from an unusually large cast. It's not unusual that there are many characters, but how many major characters there are. There are approximately 25 major speaking roles, and that has to be some sort of record. But all the performances are wonderful and unique and you feel for each character in the country music setting of Nashville.

So what exactly is this film about? Well, that's really hard to pinpoint as there is no one big linear plot line. It is essentially about a group of people living life in Nashville during a political-happy time (kind of reminds me of the current 2016 political race). But let's break down the plot into the little segments. We have Barbara Jean (Ronee Blackley) who is the current reigning country queen of Nashville, but health problems is causing her to fall apart and she also later becomes a symbol for political assassination. Then we have Delbert (Ned Beatty) and Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin) who live a rather sad life because of a failing marriage and trying to take care of two deaf children. Delbert is involved in a politics as he is trying to bring politics and country music together. Then we have a British journalist named Opal (Geraldine Chaplin) who decides to get into the thick of events within the Nashville scene. As the famed movie critic Roger Ebert paraphrases what this movie is about, it's many things. A musical, a docudrama about life in Nashville, a political story that was influenced by events like the Watergate scandal, and it is also a satire about country music.

With such a large ensemble, I was surprised how much Altman was able to get from all of his characters. They were superbly written and the performances were genuine. Many of the characters do their own singing, and you can tell they are not professional singers. While the voices may not be the best ones ever, I loved the raw, edgy sound with added to the realism of the performances. The film is not composed of big stars (at the time or even by today's standards), but they often hit the spot. I loved Ronee Blackley's performance as the country queen, Barbara Jean. Her singing is decent, but she brings a sensitive side to her character and she is involved in a big political showdown at the end of the movie. She reminds me of a similar real-life country singer, Loretta Lynn. Lily Tomlin delivered one heck of a impressive performance as the mother of two deaf children. I relate to her character because I suffer from partial deafness myself and I understand her pains. She brings such vulnerability to her character. Ned Beatty does a good job in playing the asshole husband who doesn't care about his family but only about his job. We have very early performances from future stars from the likes of Jeff Goldblum, Scott Glenn, and Keith Carradine (who was impressive as a rock singer). Henry Gibson does a solid job as another famous country star named Haven Hamilton (and did have a good voice).

So there were many aspects to the plot I thoroughly enjoyed. I enjoyed the rather brutal satire on country music which gathered criticism from people within this industry. But my favorite was the political aspect of the movie. Maybe its because history and politics go hand in hand or maybe we are living in a political-happy environment at current time, but I feel like the politics aspect hold up strongly. I like the random scenes where we have this political party in support of a candidate named Hal Philip Walker whom we never meet, but his presence is always known. His politics and the country stars end up clashing in the end for a very powerful ending.

Overall, I really enjoyed Nashville. I don't think it's good of a masterpiece of Altman's earlier McCabe and Mrs. Miller but this is his more mainstream effort. But use that word "mainstream" lightly because Altman brings his complicated style of directing to this movie. His use of the actors and his political and social commentary is widely shown throughout the film. As I say for most of Altman's films, they are not for everyone. This film has excellent performances from everyone with my favorite performance coming from Lily Tomlin. There is an hour of music recorded for the film and despite the inexperience of the singers, the music mostly works with the film. Nominated for 5 Oscars and a 9 Golden Globes (a record that still holds today), Nashville is a solid work of filmmaking.

My Grade: A-

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.

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.