Nashville (1975) Reviews

• Altman's Masterpiece: "The Damnedest Thing You Ever Saw"

  gftbiloxi2005-05-21

  Robert Altman is an extremely divisive director in the sense that you either "get it" or you don't--and those who don't despise his work and take considerable pleasure in sneering at NASHVILLE in particular. But there is no way around the fact that it is an important film, a highly influential film, to most Altman fans his finest films, and to most series critics quite possibly the single finest film made during the whole of the 1970s. According to the movie trailer available on the DVD release, NASHVILLE is "the damnedest thing you ever saw"--and a truer thing was never said, for it is one of those rare film that completely defies description. On one level, the film follows the lives of some twenty characters over the course of several days leading up to a political rally, lives that collide or don't collide, that have moments of success and failure, and which in the process explore the hypocrisy that we try to sweep away under the rug of American culture. If it were merely that, the film would be so much soap-opera, but it goes quite a bit further: it juxtaposes its observations with images of American patriotism and politics at their most vulgar, and in the process it makes an incredibly funny, incredibly sad, and remarkably savage statement on the superficial values that plague our society. What most viewers find difficult about NASHVILLE--and about many Altman films--is his refusal to direct our attention within any single scene. Conversations and plot directions overlap with each other, and so much goes on in every scene that you are constantly forced to decide what you will pay attention to and what you will ignore. The result is a film that goes in a hundred different directions with a thousand different meanings, and it would be safe to say that every person who sees it will see a different film. In the end, however, all these roads lead to Rome, or in this case to the Roman coliseum of American politics, where fame is gained or lost in the wake of violence, where the strong consume the weak without any real personal malice, and where the current political star is only as good as press agent's presentation. 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. Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

• Does Christmas smell like oranges to you?

  slokes2003-12-07

  The opening shot of "Nashville" shows a van with a loudspeaker offering platitudes from Hal Phillip Walker, Replacement Party candidate for President and the perfect middleman for the movie "Nashville," which like the never-seen candidate offers a series of apparently disconnected vignettes that touch on deeper truths but remain enigmatic and yet, somehow, substantial and truthful. "Nashville" is the kind of film scholars champion and no one else watches, which is a shame because it has a lot to offer, and not just to pointyheads. I avoided it for years because of Pauline Kael's iconographic reviews in the New Yorker. If she liked it so much, it couldn't be that good. It was a film where Eastern intellectuals took their shots at country yokels like so many fish in a barrel. Boy, was I wrong. "Nashville" is an empathic, genuine-feeling soap opera set to country & western music, the kind they used to play before Faith Hill and the Dixie Chicks revamped Nashville into Hollywood East. The movie takes a while to get started, and viewers are required to stick with a seemingly random group of characters with the most tangential series of relationships to one another. Over time, however, the vignettes gel into a mosaic of related setpieces that seem to move in tandem, until by the end, they gain a sort of terminal velocity that feels almost like destiny. There are nearly 30 characters at the center of "Nashville." Some are stars, like Ronee Blakley's fragile Barbara Jean and Henry Gibson's Haven Hamilton. Some are wanna-bes, like Gwen Welles' desperate and pathetic Sueleen Gay and Barbara Harris's red-dot-fixated Albuquerque. Some are good-hearted, like Barbara Baxley's Kennedy-loving Lady Pearl and Lily Tomlin's sign-literate Linnea Reese. Then there's folks like Michael Murphy's sleezy politico John Triplette, Geraldine Chaplin's sophistic reporter Opal, and Shelley Duvall's shallow and slutty L.A. Joan, whom one wishes weren't more representative of the human race. The nice thing about "Nashville," actually the great thing about it, is how we see these people in such depth and richness. Haven Hamilton opens the film as a petty dictator of sorts, running his recording studio like a rhinestone Hitler as his eyes flash and roll for signs of petty trespass, but we grow to like his hokey showmanship and his genuine impulse to entertain and, at the end, see to it Nashville does not disintegrate into another Dallas. He's not a bad guy, he just has bad moments, and virtually the same can be said of nearly everyone in this film. Is "Nashville" a political film? There's Hal Phillip Walker, and a final act of political assassination, but it seems more cultural. Certainly it's not topical, though a Washington outsider did win the Presidency in 1976. We aren't really encouraged to take Walker too seriously, not with those wild-eyed Walker girls waving placards with their frosted Manson-girl gazes. Is it a satire of Nashville, or Middle America? It's far more brutal when it takes on the smarmy Triplette, or the transatlantic twit Opal, who seem the most contemptuous of Southern values. Talk about not having a clue. By the second half of the film, we are locked into all the personal dramas and moments of revelation, to the point we feel them more than the characters themselves. Like Linnea's moment of truth at a dive when Keith Carradine's Tom sings "I'm Easy" as a desperate come-on to her, while three other women think wrongly it is being sung to them and react in varying degrees of smugness. Tomlin can't sing gospel, and she's not as funny as she was in "Laugh In," but her reaction to his performance in that scene fully merited her Oscar nomination. Her eyes are Garbo-inert, and her head seems stapled to the wall as she wishes with all her heart this cup will pass her by. I wouldn't say that's my favorite scene. It keeps changing with every viewing. I really reacted strongly to Barbara Harris's culminating performance of "It Don't Worry Me" after watching the film for the first time just after 9/11, though it does seem a trifle more apathetic than defiant upon reflection. Still, it has incredible power, because it's sarcastic, hopeful, and revelatory all at once. It's also a perfect note with which to end a rare film that manages to skewer and honor its subject simultaneously, yet ultimately manages to find the redeeming goodness in the blackest night.

• altman's americana

  swisener2003-10-08

  Nashville couldn't understand "Nashville," and no wonder. Anyone who watches "Nashville" for insights to country music probably views "The Godfather" for tips about olive oil. Altman's 1975 film uses country music and the people who perform, listen to and produce it as a metaphor about America in the '70s, when, as Warren Beatty said in "A Parallax View," released a year earlier, "everytime you turned around, one of the best people in the country was getting shot." Anyone who has seen the film and visits the Parthenon, where the final scenes are filmed, may feel a sense of unease. Listen closely and you can hear Haven Hamilton pleading to the stunned crowd, "Show them what we're made of! They can't do this to us here! This isn't Dallas; this is Nashville!" The ending is astonishing, tidying up some plot lines and leaving others open ended. A star is born when the Albuquerque character and a gospel group minus its leader belt out a Nashville standard, "It Don't Worry Me." The Sueleen Gay character, meanwhile, suffers one final indignity; Albuquerque, on the same stage and with the same ambitions, achieves the fame that might have gone to Sueleen, a waitress/stripper/wanna-be recording artist, had Sueleen gotten the microphone first. We never know what caused the Kenny Frazier character to crack; perhaps like Mark David Chapman (John Lennon) he was obsessed with the Holden Caulfield character in "Catcher in the Rye," although we can feel fairly certain that he did not share John David Hinckley's (President Reagan) obsession with Jodie Foster since "Taxi Driver" would not be released for another year. Watching "Nashville" for the first time, you may feel protective of Barbara Jean's character for reasons you can't immediately explain but will learn all too well. I feel the same urge to shout at the screen, warning her character of possible danger, that I experienced in "From Here to Eternity," knowing that Pearl Harbor was imminent and would change everything. Characters transform before our eyes. Del Reese (Ned Beatty), bored with his marriage to a Nashville superstar and as a father to hearing-impaired children, cares enough at the end to lead a wounded Haven Hamilton to safety. Hamilton (masterfully played by Henry Gibson) would stomp anyone in his path to create a hit record but is the first to care for Barbara Jean in her moment of need. Sure, some of the songs are terrible -- some country music is terrible -- but could anything be more poignant than Barbara Jean's rendition of "My Idaho Home" or Keith Carradine singing "I'm Easy" in a nightclub where four of his conquests look on equally with lust and bewilderment. Country singers, like stock-car drivers, inspire tremendous loyalty and jealousy among their fans, which Altman depicts beautifully when Scott Glenn, a devoted fan of Barbara Jean, leaves the Opry as Connie White appears to sing a tribute to her ailing rival. Hamilton's character is never better than when between songs he asks listeners to send Barbara Jean a card and "tell her that Haven told you to write." Altman would rate among the greatest directors -- as the American Fellini -- if this were his only effort. Despite its convoluted plot structure, "Nashville" achieves greatness and searches for truth. If the 1970s shaped your life in any respect, this is a movie experience not to be missed.

• a milestone in my filmgoing experience

  sryder@judson-il.edu2004-08-21

  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.

• One of the great films of our time

  anhedonia2004-08-19

  I suppose the brilliance of "Nashville" is that almost 30 years after its initial release, Robert Altman's slice of Americana has lost none of its punch. Despite being made in the Watergate and Vietnam era, the film remains relevant as ever. In fact, one could argue, the film's even more relevant today in this age of celebrity-worship and apathetic, gutless American media who believe missing suburban wives are more pertinent and crucial to this nation's well-being than questioning facts and our leaders' motives for waging a needless, costly war. The film's about the politics of country music, families, stardom, search for stardom, political manipulation and populist political candidates. The unseen presidential candidate's spiel in "Nashville" could easily have been sound bites from contemporary populists; he could be seen as the cinematic trend-setter for the Ross Perots, Jesse Venturas, Howard Deans and Ralph Naders. The film is at once a political drama, musical and documentary all effortless woven together by a master storyteller, who truly is an American treasure. In "Nashville," Altman's overlapping dialogue works to perfection as he captures this panoramic view of five days in Nashville through the eyes of two-dozen characters. With so many characters, it's Altman's genius that he keeps this an engrossing character study. Although he tosses aside all conventions of narrative storytelling, we get to know characters better in "Nashville" than we do in many contemporary dramas with fewer characters. There's Ronee Blakley's country singer; Lily Tomlin's doting housewife and mother; Scott Glenn's caring soldier; Keith Carradine's lecherous pop star; Ned Beatty's disinterested father; Keenan Wynn's loving husband; Michael Murphy's sleazy campaigner; and Gwen Welles' sad wannabe country singer, whose scene at a political fund-raiser is heartbreaking. And Jeff Goldblum's motorcyclist and Geraldine Chaplin's Opal are the threads that weave through all the lives in this marvelous tapestry. There are plenty of terrific songs in "Nashville" - some might complain too many - but the best are Carradine's Oscar-winning "I'm Easy" and "It Don't Bother Me." They add to the nice sense of cynicism that layers the movie. Altman's one of the big reasons the 1970s is regarded as the greatest decade of American filmmaking. Look at just a few of his contributions in that decade - "Nashville," "MASH" (1970), "Brewster McCloud" (1970), "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" (1971), "Images" (1972) and "The Long Goodbye" (1973). His films also influence other talented filmmakers, including Alan Rudolph (who worked on Altman films) and Paul Thomas Anderson, whose storytelling style - "Boogie Nights" (1997) and "Magnolia" (1999) - clearly is Altman-inspired.