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In 1975 United Artists sent Robert Altman a screenplay that made extensive use of the catalogue of country songs the company had recently purchased. This is the kind of cynical publicity exercise that would have been right at home in the 80’s, but Altman had better things to do with his time than direct a feature-length video clip. He commissioned a new script by Joan Tewkesbury, rounded up a bunch of actors who had never come within spitting distance of the A-list, and dragged cast and crew down to Nashville to shoot a 160 minute slice of Americana.

Anyone who has seen Short Cuts, Prêt-à-Porter or Gosford Park will have an idea of how it turned out. Altman’s major concern was to capture a unique time and place in American history, and Nashville shares the atmospheric visuals and extended character roster that characterised his later films. It canvasses a variety of topics – American politics, the undesirable side-effects of achieving celebrity status and our innate desire to be idolised by an audience, to name just a few – and while it’s not as emotionally affecting as Short Cuts the loose, free-flowing narrative pays its own unique dividends.

Before you put the film on your must-see list, there’s one important consideration which cannot be avoided: if you harbour a deep-seated dislike of country music, you’ll be hard-pressed to last the distance. Approximately half the running time is devoted to musical numbers (the cast mixes genuine country singers with actors who can hold a tune), ranging from the maudlin lamentations comedians use to denigrate the genre (check out For the Sake of the Children, in which Henry Gibson lists his offspring as the three reasons why he can’t just walk out the door) to the kind of earnest, folk-tinged ballads that single-handedly gave punk a reason to exist (I’m Easy, which won an Oscar for best song).

My 400-odd CD collection contains exactly seven by country artists (two by Gram Parsons, four from The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and – God help me – John Denver’s Favourites), so I wouldn’t describe myself as a fan, but to my rock-attuned ear the majority of Nashville’s performances were at least listenable, and several had me giving serious consideration to purchasing the soundtrack. However, if you truly detest this brand of down-home musicianship you’d be advised to steer clear, since having dramatic sequences constantly interrupted by music you’d rather be disembowelled than listen to doesn’t make for an enjoyable viewing experience.

The film’s narrative spine is provided by a political campaign, with the characters interacting to various degrees en route to an all-star concert designed to recruit the locals to the cause. Certain plot threads arouse the kind of emotional investment that underpinned Short Cuts (a tone-deaf singer’s quest for fame and a narcissistic folkie’s bedroom liaisons are suitably memorable) but most of the roles and relationships are communicated via a series of brief snapshots, a scripting decision which will infuriate anyone expecting a traditional narrative.

This is the nature of the beast - if you’ve got 80 minutes that don’t involve someone belting out a tune and 24 major players, it leaves around 3 minutes of screen time for each of them to make their mark. Some do, others don’t, but Tewkesbury obviously intended for her creations to behave like real people, which means there’s few of the contrived instances of high drama or exaggerated emotion many films rely upon to hook the audience. The upside of this approach is that we’re permitted to make our own judgements about the characters’ right to life without being swayed by blatant manipulation, and if we accept that nobody’s going to lay their souls bare for our amusement then watching them go about their daily business becomes surprisingly involving.

The film rewards close study, since the characters communicate vital information about themselves with throwaway lines, gestures and what they don’t say, rather than what they do. The illusion of eavesdropping on genuine lives in progress is assisted by Altman’s penchant for having the camera wander off in the middle of conversations (which often continue in the background, making a case for watching a subtitled version on DVD) and the universally naturalistic performances by actors who obviously checked their egos at the door. It’s akin to crashing a party filled with strangers, picking up intriguing snippets of conversation on the way through, and using our imagination to fill in the gaps is a refreshing alternative to the interminable bouts of exposition that scriptwriters like to pass off as character development.

This free-form approach is the key to Nashville’s success, for the combination of Altman’s pseudo-documentary shooting style, the cast’s low recognition factor and the saturation-level soundtrack lend the proceedings the appearance of reality. I wasn’t in Nashville in 1975, but there can be little doubt that Altman captured the spirit of the country-music heartland as it was a quarter-century ago, giving us one of the most quintessentially American films of the era into the bargain. The fragmented narrative and understated dramatic elements demand a certain level of commitment, but it’s the product of a master working at a peak he’s rarely achieved since, and if you tune into its wavelength you’ll be privy to an enveloping experience that’s impossible to digest in a single viewing.

See it, think about it, then see it again. It’s the voice of America, and the passage of time has done nothing to dull its clarity.

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=2083&reviewer=193
originally posted: 02/15/02 12:00:00
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