Produced/Directed by Robert Altman
Scenario by Joan Tewkesbury
Starring
Henry Gibson as Napoleonic Country Singer
Ronee Blakely as the Queen on the Scene
Karen Black as the Super Star
Keith Carradine as Callous Folkie Guy
Lily Tomlin as Gospel Singer
Ned Beatty as Political Fixer
Geraldine Chaplin as Radio Documentarian
Gwen Welles as Singer Who Cannot Sing
Robert DoQui as Diner Manager/Caterer
Scott Glenn as Soldier
Jeff Goldblum as Easy Riding Magician
. . .
". . . you may say
that I ain't free,
but it don't worry me . . ."
. . .
Review by William D.Tucker.
We begin in a recording studio. A megalomaniacal country western singer does take after take of an obsessively dopey paean to the Protestant Work Ethic and Manifest Destiny-"We must be doin' something right to last two hundred years!" The singer is a sparkly knockoff Roy Acuff with a Napoleon Complex. Sure he's got seniority on the scene, but he's starting to show his age, and his dictatorial perfectionism wouldn't be acceptable from an up-and-comer. He's a jerk. Later, we see him try to rally a crowd from the depths of shock and tragedy, and maybe we hate him a little less.
We cut to another part of the studio machine to see a white lady rather laughably attempting to lead a chorus of Black gospel singers. Later, we find out that this white lady is a pretty nice person stuck in a loveless marriage to a philandering political fixer. She loves her children sincerely, and we perhaps sympathize when she eventually cheats on hubby with a callous young folkie in a squalid hotel room.
But what about that political fixer's side of things? He's not a violent man. Not overtly so. He makes a solid living. He has no capacity for emotional connection to his wife and kids. But he's not a wifebeater, he doesn't hit his kids. He basically knows his wife is about to fuck around on him. He knows he's Absent Dad, Staying Out Too Late With The Boys Dad, and so a neglected wife must have her needs satisfied some other way. We probably even pity him during a scene where he wakes up late Sunday morning, all hungover, pathetically hard-boiling a couple of eggs, or trying to, anyways. This was once a part of American Masculinity: a Man Does Not Cook But He Can Sorta Boil Water If He Must. Later, we perhaps feel far less sympathy for this man when we bear witness to an abject strip show he stages to hustle political contributions out of a gathering of Tennessee businessmen and land owners.
About that strip show: it's all about getting money for the campaign of a populist third party candidate-"The Replacement Party"-who has fielded an army of cute ladies in American flag themed outfits who do flyering and person-to-person advocacy. There's also a loudspeaker truck that plays an interminable and hilarious pre-recorded speech outlining a litany of proposals and grievances, many of which make a little too much sense: healthcare for all; tax the rich; and, my personal favorite, scrapping the National Anthem for a song you can actually both comprehend and sing. Fuckin' A. Surely, the Replacement Party has zero chance. But it was nice to dream for awhile. One all-too-revealing scene: the flag ladies swarm a pair of dudes who have just gotten into a car crash. Crisis creates opportunity for those paying attention. As for the rest of us, well-
This fender bender is but a vague echo of a truly spectacular freeway pile-up that instantly becomes a professional networking event. Shit has broken down systemically, so cover your ass, cover your balls, and start hustling for Number One, motherfucker! That's one of them-thar American Ways, isn't it? Yep.
The Queen on the Scene is a delicate singer-songwriter who passes out during what may or may not be a staged bout of the vapors to drum up sympathy from the press. Later, we discover she feels imprisoned within her persona as a dainty Southern Belle. We bear witness to a free concert that transforms into a grotesque open mic free association as words pour out of her in a not-so-staged psychological meltdown. Someone in the audience unfortunately perceives this as an expression of a desire to no longer exist.
The Queen on the Scene's Number One Fan is a soldier who wanders listlessly from place to place, seemingly too shy to ask for an autograph directly.
An easy riding magician says nothing, but lets his tricks speak for him.
A lady from the BBC-a radio documentarian-wanders throughout all things, trying her hand at a kind of Imperial Gonzo Journalism. Much like both the Crown and Hunter S. Thompson, the results are hilarious, horrifying, and self-negating in the long run. She has no idea that she has no idea about America in 1974 or thereabouts. But this is fine. Because neither do most Americans have any idea that we have no idea about our own shit. Media has its own ends, and we are all just so many means. It evens out.
We see a woman who cannot sing a note singing into a mirror. It's the dream, goddamnit, that drives people. Fuck Reality.
The woman who cannot sing works as a waitress in a diner managed by a man who moonlights as a caterer for fancy events. He's Black and a working class outsider who badly wants to fit into the community. Yet, he calls out an African-American country performer as an "Oreo"-Black on the outside, white on the inside. He's super pissed-off that people take him for granted because he works hard and doesn't kiss ass. He even tries to tell his valued employee that she cannot sing, that she's wasting her life chasing a futile dream. He's being his most authentic self and is still miserable.
The one authentically untroubled person is a sexy blonde lady who can fuckin' sing. She's the Super Star. You better believe everyone hates her ass.
The camera passes over this parade of people and car wrecks with a canabinoid inflected detachment. You could call it "Shit, happens, my dude" the Movie.
Nashville. It's a movie about Nashville, the city where they make all that shitkicker music. We see the music as a product. We see the music as it is marketed to a consumer public. We see the music as a dream to be attained, and as a cat o' nine tails with which to flog oneself. We see it as a vessel for ideology. We see it as a target for obsessives of varying degrees of obnoxiousness and/or dangerousness. We see it as a lifestyle. We see it as labor. We see it as management. We see it as hierarchy. We see it as jealousy. We see it as ego. We see it as a way to get laid. We see it as a ginormously sick fuckin' joke. We see it as a way to generate dumptrucks full of cash. We see it as an art, as a craft, as a passion, as a calling. We also see it from the perspectives of those with zero musical talent or skill. We get an eyeful of Nashville and its musical output in the film Nashville.
It's all staged with a mixture of rigorous planning and hair-raising improvisation. Shot on location in the for-real city of Nashville for real. Nashville could probably not be made ever again in this manner unless someone had a billion dollars to buy off everyone and buy up everything. And even if you did it could scarcely be about goofy-ass shitkicker music. It would all be carefully managed and curated and up-to-the-minute Bro Country bullshit. I'm not saying that things were better in the past, but there were certain creative visions that could only be achieved at specific moments of time, and then those moments vanish forever. It's neither good or bad, really, it's just the way of things. New circumstances obtain, and new visions become doable. On things go until they stop or crash or die or what have you.
Nashville follows lots of people doing lots of things. There's no protagonist. I submit to you that there are only antagonists in this film. It's kind of astonishing to behold. There are characters that are completely unnecessary by the standards of Screenplay 101 bullshit. It sorta fits into the whole Three Act Thing, if you really need it to, but doesn't feel it. Nashville features observational scenes that play very naturally, very off-the-cuff, with people talking in a leisurely manner while the world trundles on all around them. And then you have sharpened sequences of dangerous satire wherein various kinds of hypocrisy and confusion are mercilessly gutted for all to see. Some of the musical performances are extremely earnest and full of longing. Some of the songs are brutally satirical. One sequence veers from comedy to sadism and resolutely does not veer back to any comfort zone. Nashville left me paraphrasing a line from Aliens: "Get to a safe distance, and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. " Nashville humanizes Nashville . . . yet still has no pity for it in the end. Nor should it.
And yes, Nashville isn't just about Nashville. It's about the USofA. It's about having zero faith in either political party. It's about the hangover from Vietnam, from Nixon, from the murders of JFK and RFK, from the wave of white supremacist murders of civil rights leaders. Nashville is trying to musically narcotize We the People with cornpone depictions of patriotism, traditional marriage, and Protestant Work Ethic exhortations to blame your own self if you can't get ahead in life. The pretentious creators of this narcotic music lead broken, fucked-up lives full of infidelity, addiction, bitterness, and loathing just like the rest of us, but We the People-We the Spectators-put 'em up on stage and demand that they be something more, something less. More, in that they live up to the ideals of unlimited capitalist success forever. Less, in that they live up to the ideals of unlimited capitalist success forever. No one lives up to Jack Shit in Nashville, tho', as, in the end, we are smacked across the face with a brutally stark climax.
