Nathan's Movie Collection: Nashville (1975)
"You get your hair cut. You don't belong in Nashville!"
Note: Most of these movies have been around for a considerable amount of time, so assume there will be spoilers all throughout.
I just realized that with this and All of Me, which I’ll be sharing later this month, I’ve accidentally made this a Lily Tomlin month. Which is great because Lily Tomlin rules. Just don’t expect this kind of synergy for the rest of the series. Anyway, this is Nashville.
It was about nine or ten years ago when I decided to actively broaden my film-watching horizons1. When I went down that path, the library became an important resource and it’s through them I discovered the Criterion Collection, so a big thank you to the Patience S. Latting Northwest Library in Oklahoma City. I also got back into reading again around the same time after reading almost all of Slaughterhouse-Five in one sitting in one of their big comfy chairs. But this isn’t about reading, so we’re moving on.
One of those Criterion label movies was Robert Altman’s Nashville, a musical comedy-drama clocking in at 2 hours and 40 minutes. I picked this one to represent my love of Long Cinema2. The runner-up was Andrei Rublev, Andrei Tarkovsky’s three-hour opus about the life of religious icon painter Andrei Rublev that ends with an extensive slideshow of the man’s work.
Actually, the real reason I picked Nashville though is because I love Robert Altman, and this is my favorite of his movies. It is a long movie, but there are 24 main characters—all involved in complex storylines—whose lives we move in and out of over a five-day period, all leading up to a presidential gala concert in Nashville, TN. There are also full musical performances featuring songs written and performed by the actors themselves. And scenes are connected by a young Jeff Goldblum riding a giant tricycle onto the next location in the story, which I have put a picture of above this paragraph. The next time Marvel makes a three-hour Avengers movie, there should be a silent Tricycle Man riding from multiverse to multiverse, connecting all the Gleep-Glops fighting the Gloopy-Gloops or whatever the big battle is at that point3.
Altman knew how to stack a cast, so in this one you have folks like Jeff Goldblum, Lily Tomlin, Ned Beatty, Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, and Scott Glenn. At the center of this fictional music industry4 are rival country stars Barbara Jean5 (Ronee Blakley) and Connie White (Karen Black). Barbara Jean was directly inspired by Loretta Lynn while Connie White was an amalgamation of several different artists, the clearest one being Tammy Wynette. What’s fun to do is see who else you can find in the movie. Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) has a little bit of Porter Wagoner while Tom Frank (Keith Carradine) is straight up Kris Kristofferson.
It’s hard to single out one performance because this is such a strong ensemble but I did mention Lily Tomlin, one of my favorite actresses, in the first paragraph. It’s between this, 9 to 5, and All of Me for my favorite Tomlin performances. My first exposure was through a SiriusXM comedy channel that would play her telephone operator sketches. Those sketches, as well as Bob Newhart, were the experience I brought with me when I went to work in a call center for two years. While not uncomplicated herself, Linnea is maybe the only selfless character in the whole movie. One of my favorite scenes is Linnea listening as her deaf son tells her about his day. We see Del fidgeting around, trying to hurry things but Linnea never breaks focus, listening intently to her son while motioning for Del to be patient. It’s little moments like these in big movies that Altman is a master at pulling off.
The other thing Altman was a master at was fitting a whole TV season’s worth of storytelling into a 160-minute movie6. That means the movie flies by if you’re enjoying it. If not, I’m sure it’s just feels loud and obnoxious. If you're thinking of giving it another go, my favorite thing to do when rewatching an ensemble movie is to focus on different characters each time and there's plenty to choose from in Nashville. Atlman was known for having scenes where multiple characters were talking at the same time and that could be a headache for some. But as someone who grew up with a large extended family where get-togethers would have three or four conversations going at once, he really captures what it feels like to be in that kind of room. It also makes me think of when I, a teenager, discovered YouTube and started mainlining live performances, I would always go back to the ones I liked and watch different musicians each time to see what they were doing on stage.
Which leads me to the music, the main hook (pun indented) for this movie. While I mostly listened to Christian music growing up, country was for some reason allowed, probably because of all the songs about God and guns. I’m also sure the tradition of popular country singers putting out gospel albums didn’t hurt either. In fact, there’s quite a few songs in the movie, like “It Don’t Worry Me,” (written by Keith Carradine) that sound like songs we used to sing in church. I think of a song like “I Lean on You Lord” that can go on into perpetuity if you let it.
It didn’t surprise me to learn the country music community hated the movie because they felt Altman was making fun of them. Altman, always the diplomat, said they were probably just mad he didn’t use any of their music. There’s no denying that he’s poking fun at the Nashville scene, but it’s hard to say there’s no affection for it when the music is genuinely good. It helps having actors like Ronee Blakley who was an actual singer-songwriter from Idaho. Besides, I think in the long run the real stars of Nashville are probably happy their music isn’t associated with the movie, especially considering the denouement, which is word I’ve heard in film reviews but never actually knew how to spell until now. For some reason, I assumed there was a “eaux” somewhere but clearly I was wrong.
“Denouement” is just a fancy word for the ending scene where everything the movie’s established at this point finally resolves into a conclusion. Everything we’ve seen simmering over two-and-half hours finally boils over into Barbara Jean being shot by a lone gunman in the crowd while performing at this important presidential gala. Haven Hamilton is onstage performing with her, getting hit in the hand by one of the shots. He tries to calm the crowd and at one point says, “This isn’t Dallas,” 12 years out from the Kennedy assassination7. It’s a tough scene to watch in 2023, with shootings in public places being a common occurrence now, so I get it if that scene colors your opinion of the movie. In addition to calling upon the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Hamilton also tries to get the crowd to sing. It’s in the chaos that Winifred (Barbara Harris), an aspiring country singer who's spent the entire movie trying to get on stage in one way or another, is handed the mic while Hamilton's being escorted away and she started singing, "It Don't Worry Me," eventually leading the crowd to sing along with her. The crowd singing "you may say that I ain't free, but it don't worry me" while they're still reeling from a public shooting doesn't get more American than that.
There’s a lot that I haven’t dug into, like the political campaign the film revolves around. Presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker from the Replacement Party is never seen, but you hear his voice coming out of a van that drives through the city blaring political speeches from a loudspeaker. We never see his face so these speeches are all we have to go on. If I had to pick a modern-day analog, I’m going with Gary Johnson. No, I won’t be elaborating further. For deeper analyses of the movie, I recommend “A movie called ‘Nashville’" by Ray Sawhill and “Nashville: America Singing” by Molly Haskell, an essay for Criterion.
I don’t if I’ve sold you on the movie, but like any of these movies I’m writing about, I recommend you go watch them (obviously, or else I wouldn’t be writing about them) and form your own opinion. All I’m doing is telling you I think this movie’s great in my own convoluted way. I’ll close this out with “It Don’t Worry Me,” which is a great song. I hope the conditions in which you’re hearing this are better than those in the movie.
Translation: watching movies released before 2006.
I don’t believe this is an official genre, but I like the idea of referring to films with long running times as Long Cinema. The Transformers films are Long Cinema.
If Altman were still around, some moron would’ve definitely asked him what he thought about Marvel movies. Given Altman’s smart mouth and general disdain for Hollywood, there’s no way it would’ve been a printable answer.
Although the Grand Ole Opry is very real in this universe. It’s too powerful to be contained by ours alone.
It’s hard not thinking of Reba when you hear the name “Barbara Jean.”
I’m aware that there is also a television show called Nashville but to my knowledge, there is no connection between that and this movie.
There’s a scene earlier in the movie where Lady Pearl, the owner of a bluegrass club and Haven Hamilton’s lady friend, is seen carrying on drunkenly about her love for the Kennedy’s. A brilliant, darkly funny callback.