Stunning...

...just stunning.  There's no other word for this film.

On to the next installment on my way to watching the AFI Top 100 (10th Anniversary Edition).

This one got me.  It got me in a big way.

Film 57

57.  "Nashville" (AFI Rank #59)

I am in the midst of a bloc of 5 films I hadn't seen before.  I cannot believe no one ever told me about this one.

This is going to be a tough task.  I have to be really careful.  I have to ask you, gentle reader, to watch this film.  I can't talk about the "plot," if you haven't seen it, without giving away a rather stunning (if expected) ending.  What I am going to talk about, I think, is the art of filmmaking, and how it relates to this particularly amazing film.

I also need to confess to something right now.  Not that I think it affects this missive, but because I need to confess it.  There is a large portion of this film that is shot during a broadcast of "The Grand Ole Opry."  Folks, I've been to Nashville, and I've...well....I've been to one of those broadcasts.  I sat and watched well-past-their-prime country music stars paraded out before the audience to sing that one hit that they'd had 40 years prior, dressed in a spangly outfit (Yup, Porter Wagoner performed when I was there, along with Jimmy C. Nelson, the "Alligator Man"), and crooning to an audience that didn't seem at all bugged by the fact that these guys were not really viable any longer.  It was pure America...glitz, showmanship, allegiance, family, and a decidedly capitalistic, with religious overtones (we were sitting in PEWS fer chrissakes) whitewash (yup, white people) of an event.  It was sickly sweet.

So is this film.  Except that it's not.


Take it back.  My viewing of the Grand Ole Opry is necessary to this.  Robert Altman directed this film, and like the previously reviewed "MASH," you can't help but know who is in charge almost immediately.  The opening credits on this damned film are almost worth the price of admission all on their own.  The next thing we see, surprise, surprise, is a disembodied voice talking through a loudspeaker (I mentioned "MASH," right?), that voice belonging to Replacement Party Candidate for President Hal Phillip Walker.  Spewing a litany of populist, completely unworkable planks to his platform, we hear that "The National Anthem is too hard to sing, so we'll change it."  Or "I'll get all the lawyers out of Congress."  It's obvious that what we are watching isn't a tale of Nashville at all, but a unflinching satire on the nature of the United States of America.  That it happens to take place in Music City is coincidental.  Like I said, my observations on the Grand Ole Opry is probably why this particular film makes so much sense being based where it is.

If you've not experienced an Altman film before, here's the skinny:  he doesn't care about what you think you need to know, he's going to give you pieces of what he wants you to know, and you're going to have to fill in the rest.  There are 24 major characters in this piece, with such well known named actors as Henry Gibson, Lily Tomlin, Keith Carradine, Ned Beatty, Geraldine Chaplin, Shelley Duvall, Karen Black, Scott Glenn, Barbara Harris, and Jeff Goldblum inhabiting some of them.  The film itself is an intricate weaving of all those characters, as they go through their business during a 5 day period in Nashville, Tennessee.  During this journey we get enough information about all 24 of them to feel as if we know them, and almost every one of them is present for the stunning final scene.  It's amazing storytelling.  Along the way we are treated to several bordering on satirical country songs that were written by the people performing them.  Some performances are poignant, some are comic in their lack of self-awareness, some are downright sad.  Always though, we learn something new about the people singing them as they perform.  Again, amazing storytelling.

I'm not, this time, going to talk about the acting.  It's all honest, and it all makes sense.

Instead, I'm going to talk about the art of film/story telling.  There is so much depth in this film, whether intentional or not, in the fine details that we see throughout.  We meet Keith Carradine's character, Tom, of a trio molded after Peter, Paul and Mary.  We see him bed three women during the course of the film, and immediately after Lily Tomlin's character announces that she needs to leave, see him call another, right in front of her, as she gets dressed.  He's a desperately needy character, maybe sexually, but I think probably more to do with emotional abandonment.  That's readily visible.  What is more subtle about him, though, is that during his conquests...his own music plays in the background.  That's...well...that's fucking twisted.  These are the kinds of details that really, really excite me as an audience member, and this film is stuffed with them.  Every action, even if it feels wasted, is propelling the story/characters along.  There is a long scene involving Lily Tomlin speaking with her deaf children.  It's not really got anything to do with the plot...except that it shows us that Ned Beatty, playing her husband, can't/doesn't want to communicate with those children.  Why does that matter?  Because later down the road, we need that knowledge about Beatty.  Not that he can't speak to his children, but we need to know how...distant he needs to keep himself.  It matters, even if the scene where it was set up doesn't.  That's arc.  That's story telling.  That's craftsmanship.

Characters in this are so fleshed out, so intrinsically meaningful, that it's hard to talk about them any more.  I'll be here all night.  I don't want to do that.  You will find all you want to in every one of them.  I'd start singling them out...but I just can't.  I can't.  I want to, though.  I promise you.

Few other things, and then I'll wrap this up and tell you to watch this film.  Just watch it.

The sequence shot in the various churches may be one of my favorite bits of film I've yet seen.  I'd easily put it in the top 20, right now, without really thinking about it.  So cunning, so fantastically perfect, so unnecessary, yet necessary all at once, we learn so much about ourselves, about these characters, about this film in that short piece of cinema...I've used the words great storytelling, right?

The ending sequence is such a great payoff...it's the anti-"Blade Runner."  Whereas all the lead-in to the final sequence of "Blade Runner" feels like it never really pays off, this one does.  Everything in this film wraps up in a neat little couple of minutes, yet leaves us so desperate for answers that we sit, slack-jawed, unsure of what just happened.  Yet, we see all of it coming from a mile away.  And when we're done, when we stop and ponder what all that just meant, we realize that it all just got tied up.  All of it.  That...that's special.  I mentioned during my review of "Blade Runner" that I can take a long set-up if the payoff is worth it (I feel really insecure going after "Blade Runner" when it is so universally revered - especially by friends of mine).  This film is SO worth the wait.  So, so very worth it.  Every bit of the satire, every bit of the comedy, every bit of the tragedy and sadness that overwhelms so much of this film is paid off.  ALL OF IT.  GOD, I LOVED THIS FILM.

I'm not going to prattle on any more.  Go find this movie.  Watch it.  You may hate it, and I'd absolutely understand that perspective.  I've bought in on it, though, and I cannot wait to watch it again.  I need to get through this list, and I'm spending some more time with this one.  A long time.  It's that great.


Short but sweet.  I've got to tell you, I feel like I could write a whole chapter on this.  I'm not going to, as I'd rather just, AGAIN, tell you to WATCH THIS FILM.  NOW.

Ebert's take is here.  I must advise you that he talks a bit about the ending...so if you want to be unspoiled, wait until after you watch the movie (if you haven't) before you read it.