NashvilleSuppose you turn on your TV, or your radio, or your computer, and the sounds of a singer you like pour through, and it's followed up by a political advertisement. (Just like YouTube during election season.) Studies show that an audience is more likely to vote for a candidate under these circumstances, because we're wired to associate pleasurable qualities from one experience to the next. That, my friends, is the subtle and insidious power of propaganda, and it is one of the themes broached in Nashville, a rare film that combines a satire of contemporary culture with politics, music, and authentic human drama under one outstretched banner. A story of America--even the superficial bits.
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Like other films directed by Robert Altman, Nashville is a compilation of many stories about many people, all bound and interwoven together. By most counts, there are approximately two dozen unique plot threads densely threaded into this almost three hour film. In another director's hands, this risks a catastrophic diminishment of character development or losing the audience; but Altman manages these like God manages the human race--he leaves them to go about their business and lets nature take its inevitable course. One could argue that there is no true protagonist in Nashville--this is fair since the characters change from scene to scene, just like changing stations on the radio. One character who is present at nearly every key event is Opal (Geraldine Chaplin), a flaky BBC reporter who has come to Nashville to report on the celebrated country music scene, which coincides with a political rally for the fictitious "Replacement Party" candidate, Hal Phillip Walker (voiced by Thomas Hal Phillips). But Opal seems less interested in reporting than getting into the groove of celebrity worship, bedding musicians like the lascivious Tom (Keith Carradine), or meandering around in a junkyard, dictating a banal diatribe about racial inequality while fishing for a correlation with school buses. Opal has been described as the "connective tissue" of Nashville, but even this is a bit of a simplification. She is all but an afterthought in any given scene--a cipher for the audience, and one that is elitist, vapid, and fairly unlikable at that. When she interviews an African American folk singer named Tommy Brown (Timothy Brown), she makes implications about America being a racist country in a way that reveals herself as racially insensitive. And as she hobnobs with Tom's bandmates, Bill (Allan F. Nicholls) and Mary (Cristina Raines)--who together make up a "Peter, Paul and Mary"-esque trio--she sharply dismisses their friend (and driver), Norman (David Arkin), because she "doesn't deal with servants". (Ouch.) Even when she has the opportunity to glean some journalistic gold from Americans like Lady Pearl (Barbara Baxley), who passionately speaks about her time campaigning for the Kennedys, Opal isn't just disinterested, she's annoyed at having to endure it. Best of all is when she is having a heart to heart with Bud Hamilton (Dave Peel)--the kindly son of the exceedingly smarmy and self-absorbed country singer, Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson)--who, at her behest, sings a song for her. Moments later, Opal forgets about Bud entirely, after becoming starstruck by actor Elliott Gould (playing himself) passing by. If Opal is supposed to be a surrogate for the audience of Nashville, what does that say about the audience?
It would be easy to say that Nashville is only a satire of America--of its political greed and deceit, of its gluttonous obsession with celebrities, and of its propensity toward self-fulfillment at the expense of everyone else disguised as "freedom". But the film is better viewed through the lens of a raw and honest assessment of the reactions that occur when our individual values collide with those of others. For all of the larger-than-life characters and famous people that populate the world of Nashville--including beloved singers like Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley) and her rival, Connie White (Karen Black)--some of the most touching and authentic scenes in Nashville are those that are as natural and realistic as any given day in our own lives. Consider a scene with Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin), a gospel singer and mother of two children--both are deaf, yet she has taken the time to learn American Sign Language to communicate with them. Her husband, Delbert "Del" Reese (Ned Beatty), is a political organizer and glorified messenger boy for Walker's serpentine campaign administrator, John Triplette (Michael Murphy). Because Del hasn't taken the time to learn to speak with his children, his relationship with them suffers, forcing Linnea to translate on their behalf. There is also Mr. Green (Keenan Wynn), and elderly man who picks up his niece at the airport--a flighty stick of a girl from California named Martha (Shelley Duvall), who has taken to calling herself "L.A. Joan". She is supposed to accompany him to the hospital to visit with his sick wife--and her Aunt Esther--but Martha instead ditches her family to flirt with every cute guy she meets, leaving Mr. Green alone in his suffering while his wife is dying. These are the sweet and sour, everyday events that keep Nashville from being just a caustic indictment of Americana, consumerism, and politics--moments that add depth to the story, putting these very human moments into context. Nashville gives its audience a spectrum of diverse characters that represent many different people and cultures, of varying degrees of likability--a photo album collecting the snapshots of life.
Nashville is a rare film that is filled with scenes that resonate long after the final credits have rolled, born from a combination of an intricate plot and a cast of talented actors. (Altman playfully exploits this by including performers from his earlier films in walk-on roles, like the aforementioned Elliott Gould and Julie Christie, which underscores the celebrity-obsessed mindset of characters like Opal.) Many of the actors in Nashville also perform (and even write) the music featured in the movie, like Karen Black and Keith Carradine, as well as Ronee Blakley, who positively shines as the tortured singer Barbara Jean, modeled in part after Loretta Lynn. This adds a high level of verisimilitude that really immerses the audience into the setting. When Barbara Jean sings, it is "Barbara Jean", and not just some lip-synched tape recorder off stage; she also gets one of the more poignant scenes in Nashville, after she has been released from the hospital and is performing on the riverboat. There has been a legendary quality built up around Barbara Jean, which is manifested when she performs "Tapedeck in His Tractor" and "Dues", also written by Ronee Blakely. Her music is delivered in a powerful performance that would not be out of place in a documentary about an "actual" country music star. But after this performance, Barbara Jean breaks off into a tangent about her past, going on at length--to the befuddlement of her backup band and audience--about stories of her grandmother, chickens, and so forthl. Her husband/manager, Barnett (Allen Garfield), eventually leads her off the stage, prompting disappointed boos from the audience. Whether the audience is upset that the performance was cut short, or that they were deprived the opportunity to really understand what makes their beloved superstar a real human being is made deliberately enigmatic. Compare this with the case of the unfortunate tone deaf singer, Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles), who discovers far too late that she has been recruited for a political fundraiser not for her voice but for her sex appeal, which she flaunts gratuitously to compensate. There is the soft-spoken, somewhat plain-looking Kenny Frasier (David Hayward), described derisively as looking like "Howdy Doody"; he comes to Nashville ostensibly as a musician along with an ulterior and inscrutable agenda. There is the silent magician--credited as the "Tricycle Man" (Jeff Goldblum)--who performs magic tricks as he passes from event to event on his Easy Rider-inspired trike. And at the end of the show, there is Winifred, a.k.a. Albuquerque (Barbara Harris), who fails to deliver any meaningful performance until someone gets shot. Nashville, like many of Altman's films, is a broad and rich pageant of our world, combining the beautiful with the grotesque, the cynical with the hopeful, and the gentle with the severe; Nashville is the United States and the people in it.
Recommended for: Fans of a film that balances cynical satire and uncompromising realism by depicting a broad swath of humanity at its best and worst. Nashville combines celebrity obsession, politics, and everyday drama, poking fun at our predilection to turn to famous people to tell us what to do and what to think, while simultaneously entertaining us with a cast of talented musicians and actors performing in a version of our world that becomes more real than real.
It would be easy to say that Nashville is only a satire of America--of its political greed and deceit, of its gluttonous obsession with celebrities, and of its propensity toward self-fulfillment at the expense of everyone else disguised as "freedom". But the film is better viewed through the lens of a raw and honest assessment of the reactions that occur when our individual values collide with those of others. For all of the larger-than-life characters and famous people that populate the world of Nashville--including beloved singers like Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley) and her rival, Connie White (Karen Black)--some of the most touching and authentic scenes in Nashville are those that are as natural and realistic as any given day in our own lives. Consider a scene with Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin), a gospel singer and mother of two children--both are deaf, yet she has taken the time to learn American Sign Language to communicate with them. Her husband, Delbert "Del" Reese (Ned Beatty), is a political organizer and glorified messenger boy for Walker's serpentine campaign administrator, John Triplette (Michael Murphy). Because Del hasn't taken the time to learn to speak with his children, his relationship with them suffers, forcing Linnea to translate on their behalf. There is also Mr. Green (Keenan Wynn), and elderly man who picks up his niece at the airport--a flighty stick of a girl from California named Martha (Shelley Duvall), who has taken to calling herself "L.A. Joan". She is supposed to accompany him to the hospital to visit with his sick wife--and her Aunt Esther--but Martha instead ditches her family to flirt with every cute guy she meets, leaving Mr. Green alone in his suffering while his wife is dying. These are the sweet and sour, everyday events that keep Nashville from being just a caustic indictment of Americana, consumerism, and politics--moments that add depth to the story, putting these very human moments into context. Nashville gives its audience a spectrum of diverse characters that represent many different people and cultures, of varying degrees of likability--a photo album collecting the snapshots of life.
Nashville is a rare film that is filled with scenes that resonate long after the final credits have rolled, born from a combination of an intricate plot and a cast of talented actors. (Altman playfully exploits this by including performers from his earlier films in walk-on roles, like the aforementioned Elliott Gould and Julie Christie, which underscores the celebrity-obsessed mindset of characters like Opal.) Many of the actors in Nashville also perform (and even write) the music featured in the movie, like Karen Black and Keith Carradine, as well as Ronee Blakley, who positively shines as the tortured singer Barbara Jean, modeled in part after Loretta Lynn. This adds a high level of verisimilitude that really immerses the audience into the setting. When Barbara Jean sings, it is "Barbara Jean", and not just some lip-synched tape recorder off stage; she also gets one of the more poignant scenes in Nashville, after she has been released from the hospital and is performing on the riverboat. There has been a legendary quality built up around Barbara Jean, which is manifested when she performs "Tapedeck in His Tractor" and "Dues", also written by Ronee Blakely. Her music is delivered in a powerful performance that would not be out of place in a documentary about an "actual" country music star. But after this performance, Barbara Jean breaks off into a tangent about her past, going on at length--to the befuddlement of her backup band and audience--about stories of her grandmother, chickens, and so forthl. Her husband/manager, Barnett (Allen Garfield), eventually leads her off the stage, prompting disappointed boos from the audience. Whether the audience is upset that the performance was cut short, or that they were deprived the opportunity to really understand what makes their beloved superstar a real human being is made deliberately enigmatic. Compare this with the case of the unfortunate tone deaf singer, Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles), who discovers far too late that she has been recruited for a political fundraiser not for her voice but for her sex appeal, which she flaunts gratuitously to compensate. There is the soft-spoken, somewhat plain-looking Kenny Frasier (David Hayward), described derisively as looking like "Howdy Doody"; he comes to Nashville ostensibly as a musician along with an ulterior and inscrutable agenda. There is the silent magician--credited as the "Tricycle Man" (Jeff Goldblum)--who performs magic tricks as he passes from event to event on his Easy Rider-inspired trike. And at the end of the show, there is Winifred, a.k.a. Albuquerque (Barbara Harris), who fails to deliver any meaningful performance until someone gets shot. Nashville, like many of Altman's films, is a broad and rich pageant of our world, combining the beautiful with the grotesque, the cynical with the hopeful, and the gentle with the severe; Nashville is the United States and the people in it.
Recommended for: Fans of a film that balances cynical satire and uncompromising realism by depicting a broad swath of humanity at its best and worst. Nashville combines celebrity obsession, politics, and everyday drama, poking fun at our predilection to turn to famous people to tell us what to do and what to think, while simultaneously entertaining us with a cast of talented musicians and actors performing in a version of our world that becomes more real than real.