The most remarkable aspect of Robert Altman’s 1975 film Nashville, beyond its ability to juggle 24 characters and their individual lives, is that it has remained such an insightful look at American culture. Culture is frequently shifting and changing, so perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Nashville doesn’t examine American culture—although it certainly feels of its time and place—as much as it examines the American character. It perfectly captures the striving, the dreaming, the failing, and the myths we tell ourselves in two of the biggest arenas that dominate, and have come to cross-pollinate, our landscape: politics and entertainment.
For those who haven’t seen Altman’s classic film, the story follows 24 people in the days leading up to a political rally for the unseen but often heard “Replacement Party” candidate Hal Philip Walker, whose campaign truck belts out his political views and pitches to the community. From there you have dreamers like aspiring singers like Sueleen (Gwen Welles) and Winifred (Barbara Harris) alongside established voices like Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) and Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley) and everyone in between from limo drivers to handlers to casual fans who flit in and out of scene.
Nashville isn’t a film about any one particular story or character, and instead the best way to watch the film is let the tapestry Altman constructs to fall over you and wrap yourself in it rather than follow the film like a traditional narrative. On a first viewing, you won’t learn everyone’s name, but every character is so distinctive that you’ll at least know you’re watching different people struggle with different issues. Sueleen and Winifred may both be struggling singers, but while Sueleen can’t sing at all and there’s something both tragic and comic in the pursuit of her dream, we don’t even hear Winifred for most of the movie until the film reaches its stunning and powerful denouement.
But through each of these stories and others, Altman is telling us something about America and its obsessions, obsessions we haven’t shaken in the past 40-plus years. While other films that have attempted to make a statement about the American character may now feel outdated or only relevant to the era in which they were released, Nashville feels as timely as ever because it’s reaching beyond simple observations of Gerald Ford’s America or 70s counterculture or even generational conflicts between the establishment and rising stars. The America of Robert Altman’s Nashville is one where the show is always going and it must always go on, no matter what horrors or personal tragedies may come. It’s an America that’s indifferent because there’s too much happening and too much vying for our attention spans. When everything matters, nothing does until you take a beat and focus on just one story. Very few films are able to tell this kind of macro- and micro-level story, but Altman, who is one of the greatest ensemble directors of all-time, makes it look effortless.
While the new Blu-ray is stunning (and the best way to see a good transfer of the film now that its Criterion edition is out of print), I’m a bit hesitant to recommend this to anyone if it’s your first Altman movie. While it shows the director at the zenith of his powers, it can be a bit daunting and overwhelming for anyone not familiar with his body of work and the darkly satiric his films can carry. If you’re looking for an entry into Altman, I’d recommend going with M*A*S*H*, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, The Player, or Gosford Park. Even California Split would be a good entry for how it uses sound, a technique Altman would use to even greater effect in Nashville. But however you choose to build up to Altman’s opus, I highly recommend going there for both this director and for what his film has to say about our country.