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Nashville
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Two Takes Take 1: 2000
The American essayist Phillip Lopate once mused on the phenomenon of guilty pleasures – those trashy films we secretly love – and proposed another, complementary category: guilty unpleasures. These are the films that come to us as canonised, sanctified masterpieces which we duly consume, perhaps more than once – but in our heart of hearts, we just cannot see what all the fuss is about. Everybody would have their own, individual list of guilty unpleasures, ranging across everything from Battleship Potemkin (1925) to Eyes Wide Shut (1999). High on my list is Robert Altman's Nashville. I do not say this lightly, since I am a long-time Altman fan, and have endured this particular so-called classic at least half a dozen times, hoping on each occasion to see the light. But, alas, I have never been convinced of its much-touted greatness. Nashville was Altman's first large-scale attempt at a sprawling, loosely plotted, multi-character piece, after fascinating movies of the early '70s including McCabe and Mrs Miller (1971) and California Split (1974). As in a number of later Altman films – generally, like Prêt-à-Porter (1994), not his best – it was constructed like a vast, slightly uncontrolled happening: dozens of actors wandering around in character, a time, a place, a mood and a vague purpose – to take the pulse of the nation. ("A snapshot of who we are here and now", as the aspiring filmmaker-hero of Dawson's Creek – doubtless a big Nashville fan – once helpfully put it.) Altman is at his most sententious when he climbs a soapbox and becomes grandly satirical. Everything is painted in broad, facile strokes. Such is certainly the case here, as a veritable carnival of hungry fame-whores, deluded wannabes, slimy entrepreneurs and jaded stars move from airport to barbecue to Opry to rally ... The film is about everything and nothing: celebrity, politics, mass media, alienation, fundamentalism. Nashville has certainly been influential – and mainly for the worse. Every time we see a movie with many sad cases criss-crossing within one city over the course of a night or three (Boogie Nights [1997], Wonderland [1999], Welcome to LA [1977], etc), Altman's touch is evident. Most of these post-Nashville events reflect not only the pretentiousness of their model – the presumption to capture the zeitgeist in a nutshell – but also the superior, mocking, ceaselessly ironic tone. Nashville is a film that ridicules its characters while flattering its knowing audience. This is, I suspect, a chief reason it is so popular among film critics (especially, it seems, in Australia). On this level, the supreme post-Nashville movie is the similarly overrated American Beauty (1999). Altman gets himself into especially murky waters by choosing a specific music culture as his target – and films made about a type of music by people who basically detest (and thus cannot even begin to understand or appreciate) it are unfailingly awful. So, one must here suffer supposed Country'n'Western songs with lyrics like "You may say that I ain't free, but it don't worry me", and supposed singing stars (such as Karen Black as Connie White – get it?) who struggle to hit correct notes. It's easy to laugh at these characters if their music and performances are in some way off – but this is a game rigged well in advance by the filmmakers, and it plays into the worst, supposedly sophisticated snobbishness about this genre of music and the people who love it. Altman has always preferred his story lines – like his multiple cameras and microphones – to drift and wander, chancing upon an important development or a punch-line as if by accident. He trades the resulting jazzy, busy ambience for an incredible unevenness of detail. Some actors in this ensemble (Ronee Blakley, Lily Tomlin) shine, others grate with their distanced smugness (Henry Gibson) and a few (including Keith Carradine) look plain dazed and confused. The American critic Richard Jameson once compared Nashville to one of its many progeny, Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999), faulting the latter for being written "very thinly, very baldly, from moment to moment." Nashville cannot be exactly criticised for its writing – since so much of it was improvised by the cast – but it is certainly thin and bald. Almost none of its plot threads contain any satisfyingly poignant or dramatic shape, whether classical or modernist. Still, there is a new way to enjoy Nashville in 2000: as a blessed antidote to the Australian hit The Dish (2000). Where Rob Sitch's populist movie strives to gather all its characters together in happy, patriotic reconciliation – through work, community, historic world events and television – Nashville ruthlessly dissolves this dream. Crowded highways, social occasions, family ties, sing-alongs at every turn: every channel that should unite people in fact drives them further apart. It is perhaps a cold comfort but, nonetheless, it is one of the very few pleasures this dead '70s monument now offers.
Anywhere
But Home
Cultural
analysts call them non-places: spaces
that thousands of people pass through, that they assemble in for a few hours,
spots where they might loiter for a moment – but where nobody actually lives.
Places of transit, places of work, classrooms, highways, petrol stations,
offices, entertainment centres …
Robert
Altman was American cinema’s master of the non-place. Like Jean-Luc Godard in
France, he fixed on particular emblems of 20th century dislocation:
the airports where people land and from which they depart; the recording
studios where people gesticulate behind large glass windows, surrounded by
technology, lost in a babble of intercom voices. This latter emblem is, in
fact, exactly where Nashville begins
in earnest: in a recording studio, where the self-proclaimed journalist Opal
(Geraldine Chaplin) flits from booth to booth, bumping into a different world
each time. In the first: Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) singing “200 Years”, a
boastful anthem devoted to the USA’s persistence in remaining, indomitably, the
USA (Haven cuts off the session to throw out the long-haired session musician
played by the film’s own master composer/arranger, Richard Baskin). In the
second: a revved-up, black, gospel choir led, somewhat incongruously, by Linnea (Lily Tomlin), doing her level best to get into the
spiritual, soul groove.
Altman
had a fine sense of the multiplicity of possible non-places, at all levels of
social function and usage, that he had at his
disposal. The world – certainly, the world of Nashville – is one big loading
zone in his vision of it: people spilling in and out, very often exactly the
same, recognisable people (chosen from his central list of around 25
characters) dotted amidst a sea of local extras, endlessly, restlessly on the
move. Key scenes happen in hotel rooms, hospitals, on and off performance
stages. The ‘Tricycle Man’ (as he is credited) incarnated by Jeff Goldblum is the central image of this perpetual motion: he
just cruises around for the whole film, without ever saying a word, turning up
everywhere, having a meal or a shave or a liaison wherever he can.
The
essential element of a non-place is that it is anywhere but home. It is
characteristic of Altman’s work as a whole, from the earliest to the final
films, that his characters often rarely seem to even have a permanent place to
stay – and, if they do, it is not important for us to see them in that setting.
They seem to be permanently in exile from home, drifting, resting only
temporarily in some pit-stop of the modern world. In one of the most famous
set-pieces of the film, suggested by writer Joan Tewkesbury (and based on her
real-life observations in Nashville), we see a strange, temporary community
formed spontaneously in the middle of a highway – prompted by a road accident
and a traffic jam (a milder echo of Godard’s automobile apocalypse in Weekend). This is not merely another
clever way, early in proceedings, for Altman to introduce and underline his key
characters: during this unforseen intersection, paths cross, links are made, a
woman (Barbara Harris as Winifred) runs away from her husband …
When
Altman does concentrate on domestic environments, they are invariably cold and
cavernous, beset by tensions and secrets, about to fly apart at any moment:
anything but home. This is the case, for example, in the glimpses we are given
of Linnea’s home life with Delbert (Ned Beatty) and
their two deaf children – constantly interrupted by the harsh ring-tone and the
tinny, invasive voice down the line of folk singer Tom (Keith Carradine), seeking an intimate rendezvous with her.
Another kind of home that is evacuated of warmth is that of Haven and his wife,
Lady Pearl (Barbara Baxley): a reception occurs outside and all around it, but
we never get inside.
What
is Nashville about? It is too easy to
respond that it is a critical panorama of American society in the mid 1970s, or
a snapshot of its contesting forces (right and left, young and old, black and
white, rich and poor, conservative and progressive, etc). From the very first
moment that the film introduces its ingenious framing device – the campaign
truck of Hal Phillip Walker and his Replacement Party, ceaselessly blaring out
its monotonal, political message – we know that the
film is concerned to target a particularly insidious perversion of populism:
Walker represents the supposed voice and mind of the people, geared to its most
reactionary and fearful default position. Altman aimed high as a social satirist
and commentator – he was never afraid to do so – but we would not revisit his
films so often today unless he had succeeded in finding an indelible vehicle
for his myriad observations. Nashville focuses its ever-wandering crowd of characters upon the twin issues of
spectacle and celebrity – both conditions created by a modern, media landscape.
The
film intricately traces a hierarchy of celebrity in this country’n’western world. Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley)
is at the top: a figure whose life-long, non-stop regime of hard work has taken
a toll on her physical and mental health. Everyone else is arranged at various
rungs below her. Connie White (Karen Black), for instance, can perform as
Barbara Jean’s fill-in, but is never allowed to perform on the same stage or
the same bill as the big star – she is a rival, a contender for the crown, but
the rivalry is safely managed and contained by Barbara Jean’s ill-tempered,
hyper-controlling husband-manager, Barnett (Allen Garfield). Haven, on the
other hand – as he eagerly offers – can and will perform anywhere; he is the
classic showbiz glad-hander (he warmly greets passing cameo-celebrity Julie
Christie but, once she is out of earshot, curtly confesses that he cannot
recall for which film she won an Oscar.)
Much
further down the ladder are the various aspirational types,
the hopefuls and the dreamers – talented and untalented alike. They show up and
hang out, hoping to get near the stars and catch a piece of their spotlight. Winifred
surprises everyone (us included) when, completely by chance, she hits the stage
during the finale and fires up the crowd with a rousing rendition of “It Don’t
Worry Me”. Sueleen (Gwen Welles) is the exact
opposite: completely deluded, she sings tunelessly, oblivious to the reigning
agenda of the all-male fundraising event she is hired for – where is required
only to strip and gyrate.
The
social space of Nashville – this
permanently impermanent, perpetually reassembled crowd that moves from one
non-place to the next – is defined by its porousness,
its looseness. It is easy for anyone (such as Opal) to slip in anywhere and
talk to anyone. This is also true of the mysterious characters who have no
direct relation to music-making, but think of themselves as fans, or simply
interested (or obsessed) observers: Scott Glenn as a Vietnam veteran, always in
his soldier’s costume; and Kenny (David Hayward), the loner carrying a violin
case.
Nashville is also,
as many have noted, about the all-pervasive concept of ‘the show’, daily life
as an in-the-round spectacle. Cameras and tape recorders are visible everywhere
in this world; the media are never far away, and they are always in place to
capture a sensational, chance event – such as Barbara Jean’s several public misfortunes.
Characters are constantly ‘broadcasting’ – like, unforgettably, when Tom sings
his ‘intimate’ love ballad “I’m Easy” to every potential female companion in
the room. More generally, anyone can suddenly be on stage, in the centre of the
media lens – from the pushy Replacement Party girl who holds up her placard for
the TV camera (Altman instructed these extras to “get into the shot” any way and
any time they could), to Barnett who finds himself imploring the disgruntled,
open air concert crowd to “have a heart”. Altman deliberately blurs the line
between the barrage of media coverage he acidly depicts and the ‘product’ that
his own film inevitably will become, by transforming his opening credits into a
maddening ‘TV sales’ advertisement complete with garish, cartoon graphics.
Altman
referred to Nashville as a kind of
musical and, of course, it is saturated in songs and instrumental performances.
Lively arguments have raged about this music staged by Altman, Baskin and the
many cast members who pitched into the songwriting chores: is it authentic or ersatz, heartfelt or too smug in its parodic stance? Are the lyrics too ironic, or a faithful
reproduction of the clichés and stereotypes of the genre? Are all the cast
members good enough singers and performers to carry these numbers? Is the film,
in short, made for those who consider themselves, as cultured spectators,
‘above’ this kind of popular, hicksville fare, even before the first note is struck?
Altman,
I believe, stuck to a particular conviction about this – one intimately tied to
his vision of the porous, social space of media celebrity and spectacle. To
him, it did not matter much whether, for example, Timothy Brown as a Charley
Pride-type celebrity – “the whitest black man in the room”, as Sueleen’s friend Wade (Robert DoQui)
angrily yells in public – is ‘objectively’ a great musical performer or merely
OK. This is because the assumed quality of any celebrity in a media world is
always a matter of fantasy projection, an ‘aura’ mysteriously conferred by a
confluence of various factors: their look, their style, the social values they
embody – not to mention who they know and what deals they have managed to make.
This is why ‘anybody can become a star’ in the mythical world of Nashville –
and, conversely, why some very talented people will never become stars.
Celebrity is an unstable combination of luck, talent, cunning, and the ability
to grab a crowd and ‘mean’ something to that mass.
Altman
staged a quiet revolution inside American cinema. He has his evident heirs who
knew him and were directly associated with his projects (Alan Rudolph, Paul
Thomas Anderson), but his influence is much vaster and more diffuse. Altman created his own form of narrative action, and his own
conception of character psychology or behaviour. The stylistic tics for which
he is most famous – overlapping voices (the live recording system used, Lion’s
Gate 8 Track Sound, gets an up-front credit), zoom lens, wandering camera,
ensemble acting within an open frame – are important in themselves, but they
are especially significant for the ways they help sculpt these new forms of
action and character.
The
forward march of the narrative is often temporarily suspended. The characters
gather, and then there is a ‘happening’. This happening is often, simply
enough, a set of simultaneous conversations or interactions. Several times in Nashville we linger on the long,
expectant moment in the crowd before a performance begins on stage, or between
acts. In the after-show that follows the Grand Ole Opry concert, for example, we can study how carefully constructed – both in staging
and editing – such scenes really are. For over four minutes, the film juggles
multiple interactions, each one left hanging at every cut: the threads include
Lady Pearl’s maudlin lament for the dead Kennedys, and the suspicions of Bill
(Allan F. Nicholls) over the possible affair between his wife, Mary (Cristina
Raines) and their fellow trio member, Tom. Then, a sudden cut to a new scene
concludes the happening and provides an answer to one its lingering questions:
Mary is, indeed, in bed with Tom – with the latter, as always, narcissistically
playing tapes of himself singing.
Are
there conventional, three-dimensional people portrayed in Altman’s world? He
certainly gives us indelible vignettes of people in the crucible of their
suffering, humiliation, abandonment or confusion, like Mr. Green (Keenan Wyne) grieving over his dying wife … But he also shows us individuals
who live out their alienation, their lack of a defined, fixed self, quite
happily, such as Martha (Shelley Duvall), a wandering, hippie-type who has
officially changed her name to L.A. Joan and – like everybody in Nashville – is always in the right spot
to be on the edge of whatever spectacle is taking place. You might say that she ain’t free – but it don’t worry her. This is, ultimately, what makes Altman’s social satire so unique and
enduring: he harshly criticises the world as it is, but he is equally
fascinated with the new mutants and mutations that it ceaselessly,
spontaneously creates.
MORE Altman: Aria, The Company, Cookie's Fortune, Gosford Park, Kansas City, The Player, Short Cuts, That Cold Day in the Park © Adrian Martin October 2000 and April 2014 |
