Thursday, August 18, 2011

#59 Nashville (1975)


Plot summary (with spoilers): Super great opening credits introduce the 24 person main-character cast with an voice over infomercial-type guy, excitedly explaining to us that we're about to see "Robert Altman's Nashville" without commercial interruption", and then he says out loud the names of the cast while country music plays, in a way that's very reminiscent of those old album commercials on TV (Act now!  Get 50 songs of the price of ten!).  Very clever.
Then we see a van with VOTE HAL PHILIP WALKER FOR PRESIDENT; THE REPLACEMENT PARTY on it, as we're treated to a man on a recording blasting out of the van speakers, pledging that he's not like those other guys and wake up America those Washington fat cats are blah blah and all that Ron Paul third party goodness we love but don't ever vote for.
We go into a recording studio where we meet the first batch of characters; there's Haven Hamilton; the old timey boot-in-your-ass country guy, currently recording a song about America's 200th birthday.  His wife Lady Pearl and their adult son are also there.  Plus, there's a BBC documentary filmmaker named Opal.  Haven stops the recording and insists that Opal leave the studio, so the son takes her to another room where she watches Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin, yay!) sing gospel songs with a black choir. Opal speaks excitedly and hilariously racistly about African singers and how they're just a choir robe away from their primitive dancing and gyrating relatives on the other side of the planet. She's a just a real peach, that Opal.
Cut to the airport, where huge Nashville singing sensation Barbara Jean is returning home after some time in an out of state hospital being treated for burns caused by an accident involving a firey baton. At the airport, we also meet an old man whose wife is sick in the hospital and his niece Joan, who just flew in from LA and has announced that she's changed her name to "LA Joan", which means she really needs to die right now. And we meet the singing trio Bill, Tom, and Mary.  Bill and Mary are married and Tom is the womanizing one, played by an inexplicably kinda hot Keith Carradine, way before the years caught up with him and ground him into dust. Lily Tomlin's husband Delbert Reese is also there to pick up a man at the airport who is Hal Philip Walker's campaign manager and is trying to get Delbert (who is a manager for several country singers) to get Linnea and others to endorse Walker's campaign. Okay, and plus there's a waitress who can't sing but doesn't know it and another country singer named Connie White who is a rising star but not as famous as Barbara Jean. Oh, and there's a military Sargent guy who's there to watch Barbara Jean get off the plane even though he doesn't know her.  And there's probably more.
So Barbara Jean gets off the plane and gives a little speech and everyone claps and such. But then she passes out, so her security team and handlers descend upon her and break up the mini-rally.  People begin to disperse the airport. As everyone leaves, a few cars get in an accident and clog up the whole freeway, leaving all the main characters in a traffic jam.  They chat for a while, and for a moment I get excited, thinking that the whole movie will just be these people having conversations while waiting for the traffic to clear up. But it's unfortunately over pretty quickly, although we do meet a few more characters, including a black country singer named Tommy Brown, and some goofy guy with glasses who abandons his car in a very ominous Falling Down sort of way. Funniest part of the whole movie: the BBC doc lady is interviewing Lily Tomlin and asks about her kids.  Lily says her children are deaf and the BBC lady exclaims "oh, how awful!" and Lily tries to say they're perfectly happy and she should meet them and the BBC lady says "no, I couldn't possibly, it would be so sad!" while vigorously shaking her head and I laugh for like five solid minutes.
Then the movie ends.

Review (also with spoilers): Okay, just kidding, but a play by play just isn't going to work with this movie.  Basically, these people fritter about for three hours, singing endless songs and having interpersonal dramas.  A lot of the stories worked for me: Lily Tomlin the bored housewife has an affair with Tom the singer after he relentlessly pursues her for the whole movie, and then is humiliated when he makes his next booty call before she's even left the hotel room. The waitress is hired to "sing" at a bawdy club and when she gets booed off the stage for not being able to sing, she is forced to strip to earn her pay for the night.  Lady Pearl is being interviewed by the BBC lady and gives a hilarious monologue where she laments the deaths of both Jack and Bobby Kennedy, and fights back tears as if recounting the deaths of close family members. Barbara Jean has a scene where she's clearly still high on drugs from the hospital and she's supposed to be giving a concert and instead just starts telling endless stream-of-consciousness monologues like a meth head.
A lot of the stories were kind of boring or just underdeveloped: The black country singer is called out and derided by other black characters for being a sellout. There's a limo driver that doesn't know his place.  The old man's wife dies in the hospital and he's sad.  LA Joan doesn't do or say anything interesting at all.  The Sargent who seems to be in love with Barbara Jean for some reason. The BBC lady is probably crazy and not even from the BBC. And so on.
And there's singing.  So much fucking singing.
The movie ends with all the main characters at a political rally for Hal Philip Walker and Barbara Jean opens the rally with a song, and the Falling Down guy very predictably shoots her and then is taken out by the marine Sargent guy. Then Haven in a state of shock and possibly shot in the arm himself, hands the mic to Connie White the newbie singer, and insists that she continue singing.  And she does!  And Lily Tomlin and her gospel choir also keep singing and the rally doesn't even disperse, as the Falling Down guy is dragged away.  I loved that whole part.
In general, Robert Altman is a mixed bag for me. Didn't care for Gosford Park, hated The Gingerbread Man and Cookie's Fortune, thought Dr. T and the Women was just okay, absolutely loved Short Cuts, The Player, and Streamers. (Very soon will be seeing M.A.S.H. for the first time). His style of filmmaking is obviously incredibly unique and special.  Lots of directors put you "there" in a very cinematic way; you're right next to the main character, or sometimes even seeing through his or her eyes and feeling totally immersed.  With Altman, you're "there" in the sense that would occur in reality.  If you're really "there" at a political rally for example, then you don't get to hear or see everything.  Everyone's talking at once, no one's concerned with making sure you understand what's going on. And while that can be intriguing and engaging sometimes in a movie, it's also a bit confusing and off-putting, at least for me.  I had to watch this movie twice just to get a handle on who the fuck everybody is, and I think that's a bit much.  But I liked parts of this movie a lot, especially the ending.  The singing got real old real fast, though.

Stars: Um...three.  No, three and a half.  Yeah.

Next, more silence with "The Gold Rush" and then I guess I'll finally see "Rocky", yo.

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