Nashville

Starring: David Arkin, Barbara Baxley, Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakely, Timothy Brown, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Robert DoQui, Shelley Duvall, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Barbara Harris, Lily Tomlin, David Hayward, Michael Murphy, Elliott Gould, Julie Christie, Gwen Welles
Directed by: Robert Altman
Rating: R
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music
1975

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: Musicians and politicians descend on Nashville over five hectic days.

Review:

Tim: I'm really not a big fan of Robert Altman. I like some of his movies, sure, but I believe he's really hit or miss as a director. I was looking forward to Nashville, a film that won an Academy Award and was included on AFI's 2007 version of the 100 Years...100 Movies list. Unfortunately, I disliked the movie. There's not much else I can say about it. I'm quite frankly stunned that it was included on that list and apparently many people believe it's a great movie? It felt like a far, far cry from a great movie. It was just okay.

First off, it's absolutely ridiculous that the movie clocks in at 2 hours and 40 minutes. That's absurdly long and there's no good reason for this. Altman's film is seriously lacking a narrative. I understand that was his intent, and I get that he's telling a mosaic of different stories that all come together to give insight into Nashville and whatever else is on his mind. But, to ask viewers to sit for 160 minutes watching vignettes instead of an actual narrative is just brutal. I was so disengaged by this film. Every time I tried to refocus, there would be an unnecessarily long scene that was just so dull and unfocused. I was incredibly bored throughout this movie. Now, I give the film some amount of credit- it's impressive that Altman directed a movie this long without much of a story to back it up. I get the unique spin on approaching a movie like this and the movie admittedly deserves some acclaim for that. But, as far as experiments go, this is one that the benefits certainly don't compensate for the drawbacks. This is a dull, meandering film that was bloated by Altman's ego.

It's hard for me to even comment on the cast. None of them are around for a sustained enough period for me to engage with their characters or form solid opinions about them. I liked seeing Scott Glenn and Jeff Goldblum, but I honestly couldn't name anything impressive that they did. It was fun seeing Elliott Gould play a version of himself, but this was a minor role in a small scene in a ridiculously long film. Large ensemble casts are great, but you have to balance the characters to feel like each gets his or her due. Altman never achieves that. Ronee Blakely does some interesting things in her role, with her rambling mess of a speech the most memorable. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. I can see how that happened. Gwen Welles has a number of memorable scenes, although I'm not convinced she's a great actress. Her scene of getting booed off stage and then her return are certainly moments that stick out in the film. Ned Beatty does some worthwhile things with his role. Lily Tomlin gave a strong performance, she was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. I could go on (there's 24 main characters, after all), but I'm not sure what the point would be. It felt like each actor was too limited in their screen time to make much of an impact on the film.

I also have some criticisms about the ending. It's fairly shocking and everything that comes before it doesn't prepare you for this odd turn that Altman takes at the end. The biggest issue is that he hasn't established emotional connections with enough of the characters for that to make all much difference to us. "Huh, that's bad" pretty much sums up how I felt about the conclusion. This likely felt different to audiences in 1975, but I still think it was mishandled.

Some of the music is actually pretty good- Nashville deserves credit for that, certainly. Keith Carradine won an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "I'm Easy", the film's only win. This movie is noteworthy for being nominated for 11 Golden Globes, but again, it won only 1 for that song. The music is solid and it's one of the better aspects of the film.

One of the great things about movies is that there's an endless variety of perspectives about them. This movie is often regarded as one of the best movies ever made. I thought Nashville was pretty bad, especially because of the effort it takes to get through the film. Maybe this is a movie that gets better on repeat viewings, but there's no way in hell I'm going to sit through this excruciatingly long movie again. Altman didn't do enough to pique my interest, so I'm going to hold firm on my view that this is an embarrassingly overrated movie.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



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