Customer Reviews

Nashville

5 star:		(78)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

At last! After years of watching the disgraceful video edition of this with more or less half of the picture missing, Altman fans everywhere can rejoice in this DVD release. It's the movie that finally made me buy a DVD player for it truly demands to be viewed in widescreen. Much of the action takes place within the margins of the frame; likewise, the dialogue is sometimes spoken by characters at the frame's edge and counterpoints the image entirely. Spatially, there's no way this movie is intelligible in anything but widescreen which I believe is one of the reasons it's been neglected since its release; the minute it left theaters, it never translated its brilliant mixture of comedy and tragedy as well again (it would be completely destroyed on commercial TV). "Nashville" is one of the most democratic movies this country has ever produced. Altman weighs every aspect of it equally and every actor comes through just as strongly as the next. It's a career-high for most of them: Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Lily Tomlin, Karen Black, Barbara Harris, Ronee Blakley, Allen Garfield, and Henry Gibson have never been given material this rich again (not coincidentally, many of the performers worked up their own material and some wrote their own songs). Most American movies are centered around the idea that situations and/or objects are only worthy of the camera's attention. This movie declaratively states that it's really people who are endlessly fascinating once you stop and listen long enough to what they have to say. I sincerely hope there is enough interest in this release to warrant future Altman movies on DVD. My list of nominees: California Split, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, 3 Women, Buffalo Bill and the Indians and A Wedding. Many of Altman films from the 1970s are shamefully unavailable in this country. DVD to the rescue!

After "MASH", Robert Altman made some exceptional films, most notably "McCabe & Mrs. Miller". He loved the idea of the ensemble cast. "Nashville" is the first of his mind-blowing endeavors to bring multiple incredible characters together. At 3 hours, the film is not boring for a minute, Character development is so complete. To single out a performance would be tough, but I really liked Barbara Harris as the confused and goofy wannabe who actually brought it all together at the end. Oscar nominated performances from Lily Tomlin and Ronee Blakely (in her film debut) were impressive, as well as Henry Gibson, and a particularly touching performance by Keenan Wynn.Altman is a very precise director, and his devotion to the proceedings is prevalent throughout. The fact that Joan Tewkesbury's amazing screenplay received no recognition still escapes me. Every song in this film is original, and all are great. Blakely's songs are well presented, but one of the most devastating moments is when Keith Carradine sings "I'm Easy" (Oscar winner). It's the first time I remember a Best Song winner being an integral part of the plot of the film (possible exception: Que sara sara from "The Man Who Knew Too Much"). While Carradine sings this song, every woman in the audience thinks he's singing it to her. There are repercussions. Altman is always great, and only gets greater. His next film, "Three Women", was more intimate and so brilliant. The epitome of Altman ensemble has to be "Short Cuts", but don't miss "Cookie's Fortune" or "Gosford Park". "Nashville" is a true American original. Don't miss it!

Robert Altman's NASHVILLE, an perfectly exhilarating film and an even better cinematiic experience, follows twenty-four characters through the Country Music Capital of the World for three eventful days, and by the end we have grown to love them all (even the ones we hate). The film is structureless (characters wander in and out, and we merely wander around with them to hospitals, restaurants, and hotel rooms) while also being perfectly constructed (it feels carefree and spontaneous, and yet it builds and builds to an unbelievable finale). At once, Altman skewers the music industry, the government, and American hospitality in general. It's not officially a satire, but if it is, then it's easily the most entertaining one ever made, hilarious and heartbreaking. We laugh at the ridiculous BBC reporter (Geraldine Chaplin) and her pathetic, quasi-intellectual ramblings. We despise the womanizing musician (Keith Carradine) who, before one woman is even out the door, is already calling another one up to sleep with him. We pity the poor, naive, untalented, bra-stuffing waitress (Gwen Welles) determined on becoming a singing star, despite the fact that, as one of the other characters puts it wonderfully, "she can't sing a lick." We cry out for the unstable country diva Barbara Jean (played devastatingly by Ronee Blakley), frail and fragile, as her brain unspools before a crowd of merciless, unsympathetic fans. We simultaneously love the Country King himself, Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) for being so damned out there and loathe him for being so damned slimy. Robert Altman never intended to make NASHVILLE a specifically patriotic film--he intended to simply make it a representation of American life in its bicentennial year--and by doing just that it *became* patriotic. NASHVILLE portrays American life like no other film or any other piece of art ever has; here, in this fake version of real life which feels more like real life than almost any other movie ever made, America is beautiful, is tacky, is corrupt, is joyous, is ultimately strong, despite all of its faults. As the film reaches its exultant conclusion, we experience a genuine high from the sheer emotion it has given off--and it's a high that, as Pauline Kael emphasized in her now-famous review of the film, doesn't go away when the movie is over. It stays with you.

While it might take several viewings to catch all the subtleties and connections, in the end, few films provide such rich rewards. Altman has enough confidence in the material and the actors to allow a "free form" style to take place, thereby allowing for a more realistic, spontaneous feel. Ambiguous enough to allow for multiple interpretations yet focused and brimming with the sheer joy of filmmaking. What does it all mean? Take your pick, but remember, such a film as this does not lend itself to quick answers: fame, the American Dream, the cult of personality, loneliness, passivity, the bankruptcy of American culture......they all apply equally. For me, the best bet remains the general and widespread despair (which translates into passivity) that defines American life (and certainly resonated more in the 1970s post-Watergate environment). In an intellectual vacuum where celebrities become the ruling class by sheer virtue of their ubiquity and the politics of oversimplification create hollow, yet appealing candidates, the population at large cede control over their own lives to the gatekeepers of pop, that is "banal," culture. Our emotions deadened and predictable, our minds enslaved to dogma and superstition, and our hearts defined by passionless sex and forced connection, we are tragically set in perpetual motion to find meaning...any meaning that prevents a quick glance into the abyss. Altman recognizes this all too well. Using music to convey character and overlapping dialogue to suggest how little we really listen to each other (and comprehend since the very meaning of words is often in doubt). By the end, when the stunned crowd sheepishly sings along to the lyrics "You may say that I ain't free, but it don't worry me," we realize what Altman has been pushing us towards: the unsentimental and unavoidable conclusion that freedom, for many of us, will always remain an abstraction and we are more than willing to let others define it for us. Not knowing what it means, or ever could mean, we foolishly cling to our artificial independence which is nothing more than a vast accumulation of useless products and mass-produced goods. Freedom, therefore, is seen solely in terms of economics, while our creativity (which is intellectually based and is also related to the artistic, expressive impulse) is ground beneath the feet of homogenization, commodification, and distortion. What does this all mean? Quite simply, "Nashville" elicits these thoughts because of its complexity. No one meaning is correct and all viewers will bring something new to the table. At the very least, the film stimulates higher thought, challenging the notion that film is a passive entertainment. Unlike the characters in the film, we can bring a willingness to move beyond the commonplace to our viewing experience. How many films can do all this?

NASHVILLE is, according to the movie trailer included on the DVD, "the damnedest thing you ever saw"--and the statement is accurate: Robert Alman's NASHVILLE is one of the rare films that truly defies description. The film follows a myriad of characters over the course of several days leading up to a political rally, and their stories intersect and overlay each other to create a touching, troubling, and wickedly funny portrait of America at its most gloriously superficial. Given the diversity of material the film presents, the viewer is necessarily forced to focus attention on various aspects of the film at the expense of others. As a result, no two viewers will see the film from precisely the same point of view--and no one viewer will have the same reaction to multiple viewings. Even so, all thematic roads lead if not to Rome at least to the Roman colliseum of American celebrity and politics, where fame is won and lost in the wake of violence and where the strong consume the weak without significant personal animosity.

The performances are stunning across the board--so much so that one is unable to think of any individual performer without also thinking of the cast as a whole. Although director Altman does not so much guide as observe, there is a certain inevitability to the progression of the characters the film presents. Given the complexity of the film and the fact that it requires viewers to actively and selectively interpret the material as it unfolds, NASHVILLE will likely defeat a great many viewers, who may find themselves frustrated by the film's constantly shifting content; still others will be outraged by the vision it creates of America as a society. For those willing and able to dive into the complex web of life it presents, Altman's masterpiece will be an endlessly fascinating mirror in which we see the energy of life itself scattered, gathered, and reflected back to us. A masterpiece that bears repeated viewings much in the same way that a great novel bears repeated readings. A personal favorite and highly, highly recommended.

Altman's masterpiece is a testimony to the power of cinema to expose the unexamined life and to reveal us to ourselves. Nashville is not only the film's setting but a metaphoric microsm of the American dream with all of its attendant illusions and problems. But the film also manages to convey deep sympathy toward the 20 plus characters, each of whom is likely to become inscribed in the perceptive viewer's memory. It was the summer of 1975, and moviegoers were lining up for "Jaws," but "Nashville" was the film that made the more powerful immediate impact and deeper lasting one. Nothing since--by Altman or any other director--has come close to matching the power of this film, an experience for the spectator that probably cannot be captured by video or digital technology. Although critics such as Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert were quick to understand the film's significance, most viewers were unable to "get" the film. But for those who did, just mention Ronee Blakley's performance of "Dues," or the final shot--a Gatsby-like tilt from the American flag to the open sky--and the memories return, along with the spinetingling thrill of the movie itself. (Even some "Nashville" admirers missed the posters in the assassin's car, which indicate that his original target was the George Wallace-type candidate, not the country diva who suddenly becomes the scapegoat of his displaced rage and sense of betrayal.) In brief, "Nashville" is more than a film. It's a richly resonant world to be entered into and revisited numerous times--as much if not moreso than "Citizen Kane," "The Great Gatsby," and "Death of a Salesman."

It rather surprises me how many people who love film have barely heard of this movie. I suspect that many of my fellow Brits see the title buried in the TV schedules and think, Hmm, obviously a film about country music, I don't think so. And I suspect that the film's reputation is held back in America by the satirical picture it presents of that often troubled country being more mercilessly dark than many Americans can perhaps comfortably take.

IN some ways a distaste for country music is a positive advantage in enjoying this film as it paints an outrageously dark picture of the country music industry that may disturb fans. Then again, that isn't really the point. At a deeper level the movie isn't about country music at all, but about the United States. Unless there is some jewel that has escaped me, it's quite simply the best political satire about modern America that has ever been made. In its long slow complex tapestry following 24 intersecting lives over the course of a few days it articulates a satirical vision that delivers unfailingly the paradoxical harvest of good black comedies of being at once funny and horrifying. It is also intelligent and deep. In its unflinching gaze at American life in all its desperation and banility it seeks to address that most insistent of questions: where in this oasis of almost impossible wealth, does so much violence come from? There may better attempts to answer that question, but none of them are movies.

Most centrally I think, this is a movie about the "American Dream": about how, for every one person for whom that dream delivers its promise, there are many more for whom it turns into a nightmare. In a throwaway moment, a singer's crass preliminary banter with her audience finds her reminding a group of children that: "Any one of you can grow up to be the President." The film does not contest the proposition that one of them might land this or other glittering prizes. But it shows us with painful honesty, littered as it is with deluded losers, how many more of them will be destroyed by failing to do so and how the minority who succeed risk being still more utterly destroyed by their success. Above all, it shows us the appallingly rich diversity of ways there are in which a human being can be, in one way or another, destroyed.

If there one aspect of the film that is flawed and dated, it the main comic turn, the exasperating pretentious "Opal from the BBC", as played by Geraldine Chaplin, who, while amusing enough on first viewing, grates after a second or a third - though her, naive, very British innocence about American racial politics is perhaps telling. Besides which, this idiotic Englishwoman doesn't really belong here in this film which is so quintessentially about America (Altman of course lays into England with great effect much later in "Gosford Park"). Generally however, the acting is excellent, some of it brilliant. One might single out the little known Henry Gibson as the singer Haven Hamilton, disgustingly but hilariously preoccupied with his own semi-celebrity, and Michael Murphy as the cynical, amoral and brilliantly unctuous and insincere political aide to Hal Philip Walker (who never appears on camera), Presidential candidate for the half-baked Replacement Party. The relatively minor performances are also often inspired, notably Scott Glenn as the taciturn soldier obsessed with a country music diva almost to the point of stalking her, Allen Garfield as the same diva's short-fused and over-protective husband, Keenan Wynn as a lost old man with a dying wife and David Hayward as a nerdy nobody who turns out to be a more pivotal character than he seems. All these performances - and others - are good but the film is pretty well stolen by Ronee Blakely as aforementioned diva, Barbara Jean, a talented, tragic basket case, whose performance is altogether astonishing. She can sing too.

Even Blakely, however brilliant, is not the main star of the movie. The star is unmistakably the director and the directing is almost perfect. Check out above all the way the scenes involving musical performances (which make up rather a lot of the film) are directed, as the focus of the camera's eye moves with perfectly judged pace between the performers on stage and the countless micro-dramas backstage and in the audience: it's wonderful. The wonder reaches a climax in the explosive last twenty minutes or so of the film, a political gala concert in aid of Walker which is one of the most unforgettable twenty minutes of cinema to be seen anywhere.

If you've seen it already you hardly need me telling you all this. If you haven't and you love cinema, you are guilty of an appalling omission. Do yourself a favour and fix it soon.

It was January 1975. I was on my way to New Orleans but decided to spend a couple of nights in Nashville. I went to the old and new Grand Ole Opry's, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the clubs, recording studios, the "authentic" concrete replica of the Parthenon--I was a tourist observing other tourists, each of whom manifested in some way reverence for the source of it all--the music that had replaced the age of Irving Berlin with network shows featuring Glen Campbell, Roy Clark, Roger Miller, Kenny Rogers, Dolly and Loretta, and on and on. The entertainers of yesterday and tomorrow all had one agenda on mind: to make it by way of, if not in, Nashville. There was no other route to fame and fortune.

On my last day in Nashville, the newspapers devoted front-page space to excoriating jazz drummer Buddy Rich for making negative comments about country music on his trip through Nashville. To suggest that it was "simplistic" was tantamount to blasphemy. Altman's use of Nashville as a microcosmic metaphor for the American dream isn't simplistic, nor is it necessarily disrespectful toward Nashville and its "culture," as a number of spectators and even critics (Rex Reed) suggested at the time of its release in the summer of 1975. Rather, think of the role of Dublin in a Joyce novel, or of New Orleans in an inventive Louis Armstrong improvisation. The film is bound to be dismissed by most viewers who see it, especially on a television screen. But it is neither pretentious nor cerebral. It does, perhaps, require some awareness of American popular culture, a sense of irony, and an ability to weigh simultaneously the grandeur and ordinariness of the American people and the joy and sadness of life. The viewer who possesses these qualities is in a position not only to discover one of the most extraordinary, inspired achievements in the history of filmmaking but to be changed for the better by experiencing it.

I saw this movie for the first time at the age of thirteen, and just cried. At the time I couldn't figure out exactly why I had such a tremendous emotional response to the film, but have now come to realize that the shear beauty of "Nashville" is simply overpowering.

You see, "Nashville" is a movie about America, and its people. The themes studied are as broad and varied as its story's twenty-four main characters. However, as the result of Robert Altman's brilliant direction, the picture never becomes didactic or unfocused in any ways. Instead, it is the most realistic depiction of our nation captured on film.

I cannot put into words the tidal wave of emotion the viewer experiences in the movie's final scene when all the story's characters are united for a single moment in song. Just thinking about it brings tears to my eyes. No, I never lived through Watergate, Vietnam, or Kennedy's assasination, but I don't think that could matter any less. I believe "Nashville" is as relevant to America today as it was twenty-five years ago.

If you have never seen this, order it NOW! Believe me, it is worth owning.

With apologies to "The Godfather," Robert Altman's masterpiece "Nashville" stands as one of the best, if not the best, films the 1970s produced. Coming on the heels of Watergate, and not too long after the assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.--not to mention the great riots of 1968--Altman examines the lives of 24 characters over the course of a few days in Nashville. Of course, Nashville is standing in for American culture, society, and politics.

This is a film that demands the viewer's complete attention, and, yeah, you'll probably have to watch it several times to "get it." I like to refer to it as "Ulysses for the eyes."

It remains one of the finest films ever produced, and the finest movie to come out of the 1970s.