Nashville (1975)

Director Robert Altman has assembled a massive cast of brilliant actors to create this rollicking and rambling masterpiece. While skewering the often intertwined worlds of entertainment and politics, Altman and company pretty much play it straight therefore heightening the satire. The various stories unfold at a deliberate pace - the movie is quite long - allowing all 25+ characters to fully develop. It's a technique Altman would later utilize with his '90s masterwork SHORT CUTS.

The cast is excellent and many have what turned out to be their best ever movie roles. Among the standouts: Ronee Blakely as Barbara Jean, the diva of the country music world. She's all aflutter as she attempts a triumphant return to her fans; Karen Black is her chief rival and has a very funny interaction with Julie Christie, who plays herself; Lily Tomlin is a gospel singer with two deaf children and a disengaged husband; Keith Carridine is one part of a folk trio who beds just about every female in the cast; Barbara Harris plays a struggling singer whose big break comes at a very unexpected moment; Henry Gibson is Haven Hamilton, a ego maniacal music legend; Geraldine Chaplin plays Opal, a BBC reporter doing an expose of Nashville and serves as a decidedly callous Greek chorus. She's uncomfortably intrusive in nearly every scene.

The rest of the large cast includes Altman regulars Bert Remsen, Shelley Duvall and Michael Murphy along with Keenan Wynn, Jeff Goldblum, Ned Beatty and Barbara Baxley.

Fmovies: I loved this movie. Loved it! I just saw this on widescreen DVD and had never seen it before. It's the first movie I have seen in a few years that had me smiling from ear to ear as it ended, not because it was a feel-good movie but because it was so exhilarating to see a work so flawlessly assembled, so marvellously written and acted, and finally one so overflowing with the collective creative energy of the cast and crew. There are more memorable characters and vignettes in this one two hour and 40 minute movie than in all the movies from the movies I have seen from the year 2000. M*A*S*H and The Player are the only other two Altman films I have ever seen, and I hesitate to see anymore as how can any of them be as good as NASHVILLE?

Can't believe I've taken this long to reply re: Nashville. It is simply the movie that has had the biggest influence on my life since I first had the honor of viewing it one hot August day in Seattle in 1975. Leaving the theatre dazed, numbed and shattered, in a way only a truly great work of art is able to accomplish, at having seen something so unique and so powerful it helped this then 21 year old Canadian see life and the possibility of film in an entirely different light. That's a pretty lofty thing for a movie to do, but Nashville is the most defining movie of my lifetime, the one that all others were judged by or compared to. Over the years I have viewed this movie countless times in second-run, revival houses, and even on television where it's impact is of course diluted by commercials and indifferent presentations It was the first movie I bought on DVD, even before I owned a player and have scoured newspapers, books and magazines long before the access of the internet to read everything available on this film. Unfortunately, Nashville's reputation suffered during the dark years of the 1980-90s (the complete exclusion from the AFI's list of 100 greatest films of all time was especially vexing but rallied a bit with its availability on DVD. True, it is a love it or hate it movie, most great works of art do bring out these strong emotions and I have experienced both during the close to 30 years since the movie's release, but for those of us who love it, there are very few others that compare.

Nashville fmovies. "Nashville" is supposed to be Robert Altman's best movie. But I have to say, I just didn't get it! The movie is like some kind of surreal satire on the city of Nashville, and the state of America in the 1970's. It's Nashville...but it's like an alternate universe Nashville where the people talk endlessly, on and on, about nothing! It's like "Seinfeld" without the jokes or character development.

This Nashville is filled with people who are completely clueless about how superficial their lives are, who seem to have no idea how stupid they are. A key scene early on involves a multi-car pile-up on the interstate. But instead of running around from car to car asking "Is everyone all right? Is anyone hurt?", the people in the pile-up (who are all, by strange coincidence, characters in the movie) seem more annoyed that this accident will make them late for dinner, or to whatever they have to go to. They talk with each other, exchange phone numbers, buy and sell goods, eat popsicles bought from an ice cream. Nobody seems phased that they've just been through a massive near-death experience. These are not "people," they are "characters in a social commentary."

Altman's take on the country music industry is very strange. In this version of Nashville, there are a lot of country music singers who can't sing! I don't just mean the "wannabe singers" like Suleen Gay (Gwen Welles) who is too stupid to realize she doesn't have any talent. I mean established country stars like Tommy Brown (Timmy Brown), Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson), and Connie White (Karen Black), who are singing onstage at the Grand Ole Opry, but who have limited pitch ranges, and slide their notes up and down the scale as they sing. These "country stars" wouldn't last 30 seconds at an "American Idol" audition. Simon Cowell would eat them alive and spit them out!

Most of the songs in the movie seem to be country song pastiches. (One song includes the lyrics, "The pilot light of our love has gone out" and "If makin' love is margarine, then you're a slippery spread.") Only occasionally do we get a sincere, well-sung country song, like Keith Carradine's "I'm Easy." Ronnie Blakely has a good role as a Loretta Lynn-style country singer who has an onstage meltdown at Opryland. But even her onstage meltdown seems phony -- it is a caricature of an onstage meltdown written by a Hollywood screenwriter. (Did she really need to make chicken sounds onstage to make the point that she was cracking up?)

The city of Nashville seems to have gone insane, but nobody seems to notice. A sound truck drives around, blaring political arguments for a populist presidential candidate. A man (Jeff Goldblum) rides around on a three-wheel motorcycle, stopping occasionally to do magic tricks. An annoying British journalist (Geraldine Chapman) keeps showing up at parties and bars and sticking her microphone in people's faces, asking them questions and ignoring their answers.

And of course, people talk, non-stop, about nothing in particular, in Altman's trademark overlapping dialogue, for two hours and forty minutes. This form of movie dialogue may be considered realistic, but in this case, I found it very boring.

Yes, I know, Altman was making a comment on the times, and the 1970's were a very surreal and superficial time. But the fact that Altman captured the surreal, superfic

If not the greatest, it certainly is one of the cleverest movies ever made, in the same league as Citizen Kane or Dr. Strangelove. This movie is jam packed with messages that hit the audience like a machine gun via its many interweaving vignettes, songs and witty dialogue. Cannot recall another movie that has so much all bundled up in one.

I will not be able to discuss all the wonderful scenes in the limited space here, but one stands out in my mind is the lady-killer Tom Frank's mesmerizing rendition of his own song "I'm Easy" to his many women admirers. The intense facial expressions of all involved spoke more than words ever could. The sad irony is that such a sensitive, talented and handsome guy is in fact the most selfish heartless male chauvinist in the whole movie. That scene has not dated one bit after so many years and probably won't for a while.

This is a film some will love and some will hate. But regardless, it's a must-see for all and definitely a landmark movie that will stand the test of time. 9/10(1 point off for lack of a plot).

Nashville is a great movie. It is so multilayered, you'll be able to watch it again and again and slowly peel back each layer to see more and more. Amazing all around--amazing ability to hand you dozens of different characters and make you feel like you know each and every one very well. Most movies today can't even make you like even one character, much less 20.

Songs are memorable, some are hilariously bad, others are quite good. Hilariously funny at times, poignant and thought-provoking and heartbreaking. Amazing film.