Nashville

1975's NASHVILLE most certainly is director Robert Altman's magnum opus, his masterwork.  A sprawling mosaic whose scope is wide but never at the expense of involving, small scale intimacy.  There are a few dozen characters juggled in this oversized ensemble.  Everyone gets at least one key moment, usually more.  It's a film that presumably unfolds during the Bicentennial.  The American landscape was by then well entrenched in the Me Decade, reeling from Vietnam and Nixon's resignation.   And the Kennedy assassinations.   One of said characters can't stop talking about that.

These are broken souls.  No matter if they are lowly assistants, groupies, advance men, managers, or big country music stars.  They all share various degrees of emptiness and dissatisfaction.  Altman's fly-on-the-wall, utterly voyeuristic style is often uncomfortable.  At times it feels as if we are God Himself, omniscient.  The director's patented, frequent use of overlapping and ambient dialogue makes the case.  All-knowing.  Like we're hearing everyone at once. Overwhelming at times.  Some viewers complain that none of the characters are likable.  I disagree, but even if I did agree it would not matter.  This tapestry of fear and loathing is absolutely mesmerizing, never lapsing over two hours and forty minutes.

The cast is pretty astonishing.  Many are frequent Altman collaborators: Michael Murphy, Lily Tomlin, Geraldine Chaplin, Keith Carradine, Karen Black, Jeff Goldblum (who never gets to utter a single line).  I needn't name and describe every character, how they fit into this canvas.  None perhaps get as much time as they deserve, yet their stories, often unresolved, are satisfying and potent.

The city of Nashville is the site for a political gala fundraiser.  The candidate is an independent named Hal Philip Walker, who we never see.  His campaign vehicle roams the streets, its loudspeaker proclaiming the ills of American politics.  Things that still plague us in the 2020s.   You can argue that this entire movie is a political essay, very much of its era.

Grand Ole Opry stars like Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson), Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakely), and Connie White (Black) will compete with each other, have tantrums and breakdowns.  Wannabes like Winifred (Barbara Harris) and Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles) will either fail or rise to the occasion.  We'll meet others - drifters, chauffeurs, even celebrities like other Altman regs like Elliott Gould and Julie Christie, playing themselves.  

Actual country stars were said to be displeased with the music in NASHVILLE. Dismissing it as "not real".  Haven's opening number "200 Years" sounds awfully satiric to me. Yet entirely believable, an unabashedly patriotic anthem that would be right at home in MAGA nation these days.  Most of the tunes (written by the actors who sing them), which comprise over an hour's worth of the running time, are variable in quality.  I recall my first encounter with this film when I was in my early thirties; the music was torturous at that time.  My recent watch found me more tolerant.  Finding the pain within them, able to ignore my natural aversion to this style. Richard Baskin was the music supervisor.  He would reunite with Carradine and Chaplin a year later in WELCOME TO L.A.., which bears more than a slight similarity to NASHVILLE.

It's tough for me to write about films I love.  Words do often fail.  Joan Tewkesbury's screenplay lays a foundation that the director and cast brought to vivid, stunning life.  Altman was known for letting things happen.  Not dictating every muscle movement and shot.  He captured a microcosm of life in the United States like never before. Had never observed more keenly or naturally.  It all feels brutally realistic and timeless.  Yet strangely dreamlike.  Every scene plays like something out of a nightmare.  Including the ones where a rather intrusive BBC reporter (Chaplin) walks around auto graveyards and a parking lot filled with school buses, noting their personifications of Life itself.