#74: Nashville

Nashville (Altman, 1975)

I've been looking at comments at imdb.com to understand why so many people think so highly of Nashville. They make some good arguments: The layered narrative, the psuedo-documentary style, the spontaneity of life, the smart analysis of political campaigns (The reform candidate who spends the movie preaching from a van through a megaphone, never actually being seen). They're right, Nashville is a very well made movie.

But they also call it a 'Portrait of America'. Really? That's a pretty selective portrait. Does Altman see Americans as a bunch of narrow minded, combative, self centered idiots? In the sprawling cast of two dozen characters, hardly a single one is sympathetic. The only one who seems to show any genuine concern for another human being is Lily Tomlin's character, and only for her deaf kids. And while it may be true people are obsessed with celebrities, they aren't as obsessed as they are on television. Most of the time when people focus on celebrities it's only because they're the easiest common ground they can find to connect with other people, not out of genuine obsession.

Nashville is the sort of movie like Boogie Nights that tries to make a portrait of a culture by having the camera opnely condescend the characters. That sort of appraoch makes the cast hard to connect with, and if that's Altman's idea of 'realism', he has a pretty one dimensional view of human nature.

Rating: ** 1/2 / 5

21/101

Next: Taxi Driver

Others:

Red Riding 1974: *** 1/2 / 5
Red Riding 1980: ** 1/2 / 5

The first two parts of the Red Riding trilogy. I'm going to wait for the DVD to see the third. 1974 has a vigilante reporter main character that is really engaging and a cool dark atmosphere, but it's also slow paced in the middle and has a lot of cliche predictable police corruption. 1980 has all the problems with 1974 without any of the benefits.

25th Hour: **** / 5

Very powerfully emotional movie about a man who's going to jail for seven years in one day. The movie has the message that you can argue all day about whether drug laws are just, whether a 17 year old is any less capable of giving consent than an 18 year old, but if you break those laws and get caught, you have nobody to blame but yourself for ruining your life.

Inland Empire: *** / 5

David Lynch being super-surreal. The movie has themes of abuse of women, affairs, and confusion of reality with Hollywood fiction. The visuals are shadowy and awesome. But, it's also one of those movies where Lynch forgets that surrealness works better if you have something concrete to anchor it on.