NASHVILLE (1973)
Robert Altman’s sprawling, slinking and shifting film wraps itself around the music world (and politics) in Nashville. To its merit, and to our enjoyment, Nashville isn’t so much about music, politics, or Nashville, but rather inhabits these, lives within them the way a Dickens so thoroughly is London. Such a highbrow comparison might be misleading, though; this is Altman’s counterculture persona in full bloom. He fills Nashville with an air of subversive mischief.
The nucleus of the narrative, the magnetic center of the 24 characters’ story is a music festival cum political rally for an unseen politician whose crackpot ideas are heard spilling from a campaign truck’s loudspeakers. The music is here in full, and we get to see small club shows, large and lavish performances at the Opry, and a small variety of recording and warm ups before the big show itself. Because the narrative is spread out and distributed wide (24 people wide) and so little time is wasted on melodrama, the musical scenes don’t feel intrusive, but natural and organic.
Altman is famous for his insouciant pacing, and nowhere else is it more evident or effective than here. Nashville picks up its characters for just long enough to get a vibe from them, and then quickly (but gently) moves right along to the next. Somehow, the effect isn’t disorienting (as it may be in some of his other films), but dream-like and slightly mystifying.
The dramatic tone is low-key as well. Very rarely do we see “movie moments” with these characters; we’re usually spared the shrieking emotional climaxes that clog and dehumanize many dramas. We seem to be following a group of people who act more like people in life than people in movies. That isn’t the same thing as lacking in drama and conflict, and in Nashville many of the characters are found in the midst of real emotional dilemmas, but here they aren’t solved with obvious revelatory dialogues or convenient plot contrivances. In fact, mostly–as in life–they aren’t solved at all.
An edifying comparison can be made with PT Anderson’s Magnolia, which cribs all of Altman’s ensemble structuring (and a few of this film’s cast) but none of his patience or humanity. The difference is stark. Where the true Altman is supple and humane, the imitator is shrill and cynical. Where Nashville hints and suggests, Magnolia exclaims and hammers. Altman gets his jabs in, and he’s no humanist like Renoir (look at Brewster McCloud to see Altman with a subversive bite), but it’s that ear for tone, pitch, and rhythms of human behavior that makes his satire all the sharper. It would be hard to find a person that really feels Magnolia’s about anybody they know. But Nashville’s only about real people, even when the characters (like Jeff Goldblum’s motorcycle riding stage magician and Shelley Duvall’s daffy groupie) are quirkier, funnier than our real friends and family.
In the end, all the things that have made Robert Altman a constant source of interest, even in his missteps, come together here in one complete and untarnished expression of his style and skill.
HDFEST RATING:
Overall: A
Acting: A
Originality: A
Enjoyability: A
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