Nashville

Rating:
Summary: Great and entertianing movie
Review: Nashville is one of Altman's best works.I like it very much.

It's soundtrack contains some of the greatest country songs ever

made.All of the cast did a great work especially Keith Carradine

and Henry Gibson.

Rating:
Summary: Satirical Masterpiece
Review: It rather surprises me how many people who love film have barely heard of this movie. I suspect that many of my fellow Brits see the title buried in the TV schedules and think, Hmm, obviously a film about country music, I don't think so. And I suspect that the film's reputation is held back in America by the satirical picture it presents of that often troubled country being more mercilessly dark than many Americans can perhaps comfortably take.

IN some ways a distaste for country music is a positive advantage in enjoying this film as it paints an outrageously dark picture of the country music industry that may disturb fans. Then again, that isn't really the point. At a deeper level the movie isn't about country music at all, but about the United States. Unless there is some jewel that has escaped me, it's quite simply the best political satire about modern America that has ever been made. In its long slow complex tapestry following 24 intersecting lives over the course of a few days it articulates a satirical vision that delivers unfailingly the paradoxical harvest of good black comedies of being at once funny and horrifying. It is also intelligent and deep. In its unflinching gaze at American life in all its desperation and banility it seeks to address that most insistent of questions: where in this oasis of almost impossible wealth, does so much violence come from? There may better attempts to answer that question, but none of them are movies.

Most centrally I think, this is a movie about the "American Dream": about how, for every one person for whom that dream delivers its promise, there are many more for whom it turns into a nightmare. In a throwaway moment, a singer's crass preliminary banter with her audience finds her reminding a group of children that: "Any one of you can grow up to be the President." The film does not contest the proposition that one of them might land this or other glittering prizes. But it shows us with painful honesty, littered as it is with deluded losers, how many more of them will be destroyed by failing to do so and how the minority who succeed risk being still more utterly destroyed by their success. Above all, it shows us the appallingly rich diversity of ways there are in which a human being can be, in one way or another, destroyed.

If there one aspect of the film that is flawed and dated, it the main comic turn, the exasperating pretentious "Opal from the BBC", as played by Geraldine Chaplin, who, while amusing enough on first viewing, grates after a second or a third - though her, naive, very British innocence about American racial politics is perhaps telling. Besides which, this idiotic Englishwoman doesn't really belong here in this film which is so quintessentially about America (Altman of course lays into England with great effect much later in "Gosford Park"). Generally however, the acting is excellent, some of it brilliant. One might single out the little known Henry Gibson as the singer Haven Hamilton, disgustingly but hilariously preoccupied with his own semi-celebrity, and Michael Murphy as the cynical, amoral and brilliantly unctuous and insincere political aide to Hal Philip Walker (who never appears on camera), Presidential candidate for the half-baked Replacement Party. The relatively minor performances are also often inspired, notably Scott Glenn as the taciturn soldier obsessed with a country music diva almost to the point of stalking her, Allen Garfield as the same diva's short-fused and over-protective husband, Keenan Wynn as a lost old man with a dying wife and David Hayward as a nerdy nobody who turns out to be a more pivotal character than he seems. All these performances - and others - are good but the film is pretty well stolen by Ronee Blakely as aforementioned diva, Barbara Jean, a talented, tragic basket case, whose performance is altogether astonishing. She can sing too.

Even Blakely, however brilliant, is not the main star of the movie. The star is unmistakably the director and the directing is almost perfect. Check out above all the way the scenes involving musical performances (which make up rather a lot of the film) are directed, as the focus of the camera's eye moves with perfectly judged pace between the performers on stage and the countless micro-dramas backstage and in the audience: it's wonderful. The wonder reaches a climax in the explosive last twenty minutes or so of the film, a political gala concert in aid of Walker which is one of the most unforgettable twenty minutes of cinema to be seen anywhere.

If you've seen it already you hardly need me telling you all this. If you haven't and you love cinema, you are guilty of an appalling omission. Do yourself a favour and fix it soon.

Rating:
Summary: I only gave it one star because there's no zero star option
Review: This is one of the most dreadfully bad movies ever made. Yet so many people proclaim its greatness. Hey, you guys--I've got a set of beautiful new clothes for sale. Worn only once by an emperor.

Rating:
Summary: bad yellow
Review: What a pity : such a great film, such a bad dvd. It's yellow all the way through, or am I color blind?

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Altman is Altman, and this overlong epic is full of his most characteristic habits of film-making. As usual, there is a sharply critical edge to his semi-satirical portrait of America. Unfortunately, however, it lacks any narrative drive whatsoever, which might not be a problem if it weren't for the fact that nothing else compensates for this. The characters are devoid of warmth; there is insufficient reason for us even to care what happens to them.

Fans of country music may well find it a more pleasurable experience: I happen to loathe most country and western, so I found the extended musical episodes barely tolerable. Watching Nashville is like watching a life unfold only from a distance; this detachment is fatal to a merely intermittently interesting film.

Rating:
Summary: A shallow view on american shallowness
Review: I can't fathom the excessive praise given on Nashville and its classic status. It is put together with Altman's trademark fluency present in all of his films:in the great ones (Short Cuts, Gosford Park, The Player) and in the tedious ones (MASH, Cookie's Fortune, Pret' a Porter).My viewing experience was irritating due to Altman's inherent contempt for his characters together with his assertion of superiority towards their petty behaviour and aspirations, the meandering plot (if a dozen of scenes had ended in the cutting floor,you wouldn't have been able to tell the difference), let alone the country-western songs that constitute a first rate torture for the non-adherents. The only character who could offer some insight or commentary to the social mileau portrayed in the film was the BBC documentary producer, but Altman in order to avoid any attempt for critique (mere exhibition is far more easier) makes her as idiotic as the morons that are featured in the film. The political subtext of the movie is undeveloped and the ironic song of the ending, sung collectively by the audience after the celebrity assasination ("It don't worry me"), although aptly underlines the passivity and political apathy of all those individuals, it, nevertheless, fails to offer any constructive alternative and moreover it is characterised by a pervese rejection of the possibility of such an alternative. Altman is more of an observer whose acuteness and incisiveness depends on the quality of the script that has in hand (cf. Gosford Park or Short Cuts), rather than somebody who being dissatisfied with a given situation has something else to propose or at least illustrate what he perceives as being problematic. Throughout the film I found it hard to care about any of the 24 characters or the situations (greatly resembling those of sitcoms) that were involved because they resembled more to comic sketches than complex individuals (Shelley Duvall's portrait of a Californian chewing-gum, hot-pants bimbo, to name the least). A rather overrated film which demonstrates Altman's technical proficiency together with his fundamental limitations.

Regarding the DVD presentation of this film feature, I must mention that it is excellent with pristine picture and sound quality. It also features an commentary and an interview by Altman himself, making a must-have for the films' fans (or maybe its detractors!).

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't pass the true test of time.
Review: I'm a fan of Robert Altman and always wondered about this film. It was always regarded as a great movie and I finally had a chance to watch it. I found it to be a big disappointment. It does capture maybe the hype and hypocrisy of what the Nashville music was maybe once like, but only in a 'It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World' movie style. I found the movie really unwatchable and going nowhere. Drawn out musical scenes of bad music. Half the characters had no development other than a 'Laugh-In' style appearance every now and then. I guess these were attempts at humor. I didn't care about any of them and kept hoping that a story would appear. Finally when a star is assassinated, I guess is was suppose to convey some heavy message of the times, but to be honest I couldn't cheer for the assassin enough. Thank You! Yes, kill her. No sympathy was even evoked. So check out Mr. Altman's other movies, but pass on this one big time.

Rating:
Summary: Robert Altman's great masterpiece of the American Experience
Review: I recently rewatched this film for the first time in a long, long time, and was amazed at how much better it was than I remembered. Moreover, I remembered it as being very, very good. In this film, director Robert Altman tracks the interweavings of over twenty major characters over the course of a few days in Nashville. Some of the characters are major Country-Western performers, and others are mere wannabes. All is set against the background of a mysterious third party presidential candidate for the Replacement Party, whose cars and vans drive around the city, broadcasting his commonsensical yet superficial political messages.

Altman has always excelled more than anyother director with ensemble casts, and this is the greatest example of that in his career. No one cast member predominates. Ronee Blakley probably should have won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, but was hurt by Lily Tomlin's also being nominated. Lily Tomlin and Henry Gibson's performances were both completely unexpected at the time, since both were considered television comedians and had been regulars on Rowan and Martin's Laugh In. But truly, none of the cast members were weak, and most were exceptional. Keenan Wynn was superb as Mr. Green, whose wife is dying of cancer in the film. But the true star of the film is Altman, who is utterly masterful in the way he brings his characters into contact with one another, like a dance director choreographing an immense ballet. One becomes accustomed to seeing all the same faces in one scene or event after another, and for some odd recent it doesn't strike one as at all coincidental. I especially enjoyed seeing Jeff Goldblum's nonspeaking character The Tricycle Man popping up in scene after scene on his triwheel chopper that seems more a parody of EASY RIDER than an imitator.

The movie is laced with songs, and what makes them special is the fact that everyone did their own singing and most wrote the songs that they sang. Keith Carradine especially distinguished himself with two great songs, "I'm Easy, " which actually netted the Academy Award that year for best song, and the rousing closing number, "It Don't Bother Me." To be honest, while most of the singers are at least competent (except for the intentionally awful Sueleen Gay, heartbreakingly portrayed by the excellent Gwen Welles), few are truly first rate. The two great exceptions are Ronee Blakley, who manages an utterly stunning Loretta Lynn impersonation, and the improbably spectacular (in the context of the movie) Barbara Harris, whose unexpected rendition of "It Don't Worry Me" provides one of the movie's more amazing moments. Some real Nashville musicians turn up as well. In particular, Vassar Clements, considered by many to be the greatest country fiddler, turns up in a Nashville music club as himself.

The movie has many subtle things to say about celebrity and politics, and the ongoing confusion of the two (brought out powerfully by the ending, in which an entertainer rather than a political figure is assasinated, and by the fact that one person is mentioned as a gubernatorial candidate, when his only qualification would seem to be that he was a singer). But the movie has broader appeal than just of the Country Music Capital of America. The film intends to be about America itself. It truly does succeed in being an epic about the American experience. A great, great masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: I was supposed to LOVE it, but I didn't. Sorry.
Review: I don't know how I managed to miss this movie back when it was THE surprise hit in the 70s. And somehow I never got the chance to see it in the decades since. I have been a fan of Altman--especially MASH and McCabe & Mrs. Miller--and the recent Gosford Park. I suppose in a situation like this, a movie can never live up to the hype (I've heard people claim this to be one of the best films ever made), but I can't believe how disappointed I was when I saw it for the first time last night.

First of all, casting mediocre singers as country western pros and then having them sing way too many songs that they wrote themselves makes for a looooong and often squirm-inducing movie. (Keith Caradine's two fine songs are they exception.)People here have raved about Oscar-nominated Ronee Blakely and Lily Tomlin, and although I'm a big Lily fan, and she is good, it's a role with almost no development, and I found little to care about. And Ronee Blakely's riff on Loretta Lynne was fine, but it's hardly a great performance. Someone posted here that Geraldine Chaplin was hilarious; I found her embarrasingly bad and not funny.

I know Altman's technique of overlapping dialogue and improvisation was groundbreaking at the time, but the improv rarely feels natural or believable to me all these years later.

Yes, there are some wonderful moments and some insightful commentary on the entertainment world, politics and America in general, but I have a hard time regarding this as a "masterpiece."

Rating:
Summary: Emotional Landscape
Review: In the hands of a lesser director, 'Nashville' would have been a confusing mess. Indeed, when I initially sat down to watch the film I expected to be confused; the prospect of keeping track of twenty-four or so main characters, numerous story-lines and countless themes, seemed daunting at first. After my first viewing of 'Nashville,' I felt a degree of shock realizing how easy it is to immerse yourself into the film's world - I expected to be overwhelmed by the amount of action going on, but instead I found myself overwhelmed by the seemingly endless list of feelings that Altman's picture aroused in me. I have since seen 'Nashville' on several other occasions, and I now consider it to be one of my favorite movies.

'Nashville' is a landscape of a particular time and place. Altman's picture sets the audience in an environment covered by hotel rooms and bars and concert halls, where people work endlessly in the recording studio and out in the social environment to promote their music. The country music industry is another business, and 'Nashville' concerns all ends of the spectrum - those at the top, the struggling ones at the bottom, and those halfway on their journey. Early on, we are able to recognize the large number of characters: who they are, what they want, and how they relate to the others.

What makes 'Nashville' so appealing is how it chooses to deal with universal themes - making the picture accessible to those who have no interest in country music. Still, as Robert Altman illustrates on the DVD commentary, 'Nashville' is a musical. In its 140 minutes, about an hour of that time is dedicated to musical performances. What's interesting, though, is the subtle manner in which the songs mirror the events taking place; it may take a second viewing of the film to realize a few of the connections. While the musicians in the picture use their art to reflect their lives, the movie makes no illusions that the songwriters and performers are on a quest to pursue artistic freedom. As stated before, it is a business.

Fortunately, though, Altman doesn't, as so many others do, reduce the business figures down to the caricature of the unfeeling money-grubber. There are no clear cut good-guys or bad-guys; there's no simple-minded plot pushing the characters along. These are real people, confused, and jumbled together with one another. As Roger Ebert observed, 'Nashville' is 'a tender poem to the wounded and the sad.'

With youthful energy, 'Nashville' succeeds at creating an entertaining picture despite its disregard for the standard structure of cinematic storytelling. What 'Nashville' has done is allowed space for a wide variety of memorable individuals to grow. The ending is key to the film - it's one of the most emotional I've ever seem - being that it shows people running about in the midst of chaos; and, during all this confusion, we realize that we recognize each person. In so many many movies, times of crisis are personified by a large cast of faceless extras going to and fro; yet in 'Nashville' a connection is made between the viewer and the world on the screen. It's an experience rarely encountered.