Sunday, July 8, 2007

"Look Both Ways"

I recently watched a video of "Look Both Ways", an Australian character study which looks at love and death from many angles. This played at the 2006 Madison Film Festival, but my schedule was sadly overbooked to see it then. After the long wait, it was definitely worth remembering. Not your typical quirky depressing film (my favorite genre), this one had scenes of imaginary thoughts of the two main characters - one done in animation (the artist's mind), and the other done in Internet browse style (for the photographer). Threaded throughout the film are trains, train accidents, and train corridors, which gives it a very cool style and acts as a way of joining several of the stories. It's not unlike "Crash", although a bit slower paced and less intense. I had some issues with how the stories were resolved (or not), but overall I was very pleasantly surprised - one of my favorites this year. A great soundtrack, and the title was very apropos, too!

Sunday, July 1, 2007

Dan on DVD - "Nashville"

The word Nashville has come up at both the last two meetups - once in the context of the city and once in the context of the great Robert Altman film. I therefore felt compelled by fate to watch it for about the 2,387th time. Here's the review:

Nashville

Released: 1975
Director: Robert Altman
Starring: Ensemble cast of many great actors and actresses.

Nashville is probably the most talked about movie that nobody has ever seen.

People have filled newspapers, written books and penned at least three PhD theses about this movie. When it was released it got far more press than any other film in 1976. Even One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Jaws saw less press coverage. I could personally write fifty pages about this movie - and I say that with confidence because I did just that back in college. Thirty years on it's still a staple of film theory classes all over the world.

All that and I only know two people who have actually seen Robert Altman's true masterpiece. I think that's a real shame because Nashville really is one of the great examples of American film. To me Altman's movies are either fantastic or just plain horrible with this one clearly in the former group. M*A*S*H may get more attention for the cultural impact it had, but I think Nashville runs rings around any other Altman film. If you watch Altman's major movies in chronological order you'll see that this really was the peak of everything he did.

And what a peak it was! Altman's other movies are often marred by impossible or improbable events and characters that distract you from the experience. As with Dede's earlier complaints of the continuity problems in Knocked Up, my big general criticism of Altman is that his characters and plot twists are just a little too far outside the lines to keep me believing in them. Real doctors in Korea didn't behave like the characters in M*A*S*H. Real fishermen in LA don't fish for three days before reporting the discovery of a dead body like they did in Short Cuts. Sure, those are important plot elements and I'm not saying they didn't work. It's just that I can't get truly absorbed in a movie if I can't believe in the characters at a visceral level.

The genius behind Nashville is that both the characters and the story are as intensely real as . . . well . . . real life. The people on the screen behave just like your friends, neighbors and relatives do. I swear Altman must have met my aunt Gail at some point because one of his characters is her celluloid clone. There's no room or need for drug addicts, superheroes or murderous psychopaths in this movie. All of Nashville's characters reside squarely in the middle of the American social bell curve. These are everyday folks just going about their business as best they can. It's the true-to-life nature of the characters that make this movie so unusual and mesmerizing.

I've never had the pleasure of seeing Nashville on a real big screen but reviewers back in the '70's talked about people in the theater forgetting they were watching a film. I can believe that because the experience of this movie is so personal that you can get swept up in it to an almost absurd degree. When I put the DVD in the player the other night I also popped open a can of soda. Two hours later I found myself with 12 ounces of warm, stale Diet Coke that had completely slipped my mind. In these days of sound bites and special effects some people may be too inpatient to have that kind of experience. In the days before Star Wars and MTV Altman's direction and cinematography dragged people into the story like nothing had before. Watching this film makes you feel like you're up there living it out with the characters.

Joan Tewkesbury's "script" has a lot to do with that feeling. I use quotation marks around the word script here because - like all of the better Altman films - the script was really a general outline rather than a strict plot. At Altman's direction a lot of the dialogue in the movie was improvised by the actors themselves. What made it all work was Tewkesbury's subtlety in weaving the role of country music in and out of the lives of the characters. Much like last year's The Queen, this movie gives you a sense that the out-of-reach royalty of country music are people just as average as you or me who just happen to have some very interesting jobs. The script seamlessly integrates the world of the rich and famous into the diners and bars of Nashville and the not-so-rich-and-famous who work and play there. There's twenty major characters in this film and Tewkesbury manages to keep all of them tied together in a way that's effortless and perfectly natural.

But while writing and directing are exceptional, one has to give major credit to some of the best acting you'll ever see in any picture. How good was it? So good that both Lilly Tomlin and Ronee Blakley were nominated for Oscars even though neither of them were on screen for more than 15% of the film. At the time there was talk that all five of the Best Supporting Actress nominations might go to Nashville - and it did take four of the six Best Supporting Actress nods at the Golden Globes. The performances in this movie aren't just good, they're phenomenal.

Lilly Tomlin was a tremendously brave casting choice on Altman's part and she nailed the role to perfection in her first real acting gig. Gwen Welles, Geraldine Chaplin and Barbara Harris gave equally incredible performances. I didn't so much agree with Ronee Blakley's Oscar nomination, but that's more personal preference than objective criticism of her acting. The male roles were not quite as exceptional as the women in this film although both Henry Gibson and Ned Beatty gave fine performances that were as sincere and convincing as it gets.

The one flaw in the diamond - and again it's more of a personal thing I have with this movie - is that Altman insisted the actors write and perform all their own songs. Whether he did this out of desire for artistic purity or because he didn't have enough money to hire pros I don't know. Either way the result is more than a few instances of downright stinky singing. Half of the performances are wonderful (Keith Carradine won the Best Original Song Oscar for "I'm Easy"). The other half are so lousy that it blows the credibility of the characters. If Karen Black and Lilly Tomlin could sing then they would have been singers, not actresses. I think the poor musical performances really detract from the film in a very unfortunate way. Lots of people disagree with me, however, and the music from the movie has reached cult status in some circles. I have to say that Carradine's piece creates the perfect background for one of my favorite movie scenes ever and that Barbara Harris blows me away belting out a number that gives the movie one of the best endings in the history of film. I guess it's all a matter of musical taste but I cry thinking about how perfect this film could have been with professional song writing and a little dubbing thrown in.

As for what it all means, I'll leave that mostly up to you if and when you see it. If you ask ten film scholars to analyze this movie you'll get eleven different answers - each more pompous and complicated than the last. There's even one paper up on the internet comparing Robert Altman with James Joyce! You can spend a lot of time reading wordy stuff about this movie if you really want to. There was a book published for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the release but I can't vouch for it personally. I suggest you just watch the movie instead.

When it comes to my opinion, though, I tend to think that the simplest answer is always the best. I therefore look at this movie as having one uncomplicated, basic message: Americans, in general, aren't all that bright.

The characters in Nashville represent a melting pot of the American populace who, like all of us, are more than a little clueless in their own particular way. Altman's characters bumble their way through life never really worrying about the why's or how's of the larger world. They're self-interested consumers who are more concerned with finding love, enhancing their wealth and power or becoming the next big star than they are with the nightly news. Ned Beatty's character is so self-absorbed that he doesn't even bother to learn sign-language so he can communicate with his deaf children. Meanwhile the nation gets led around by the nose by populist politicians using simplistic double-speak and hillbilly logic that drives the masses where the politicians want them to go. As Barbara Harris sings in the fantastic closing sequence "You may say that I'm not free, but it don't worry me." Sounds all too familiar, doesn't it? And that's what's great about it. It's the character's weaknesses that make them so interesting.

Southerners saw this movie as just another swipe at southern culture by arrogant yankees. It's easy to take it that way, but that's too casual a view. If you look close you'll see that the arrogant yankees, crazy Californians and hapless foreigners in this movie are even more clueless than their southern counterparts. At least the southerners have something they believe in and can call a culture . The rest of the characters just wander around looking for the next experience in life. Fried chicken and watermelon at a stock car race might not be your idea of fun but it does knit the South together and keeps it running smoothly.

Unfortunately the outcry from the South cost Nashville dearly at Oscar time. There was talk of an Oscar sweep for this movie until the southern critics started to harass it in the press. In the end it came home with just Carradine's Best Song statue despite nominations for Best Picture and Best Director along with the two Best Supporting Actress nods. I can see Nashville losing to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for Best Picture, but you'll have to watch it yourself to decide whether Lee Grant deserved the win for Shampoo over Lilly Tomlin. I remain eternally skeptical of that one.

Overall I think this is the defining movie both of Robert Altman's career and of American cinema in the 1970's. I see Altman as a kind of Jackson Pollack of film. When he's out of his element he's horrible. When he's inside it he's good beyond belief. Ask Altman to paint a portrait with a rigid script and outrageous characters and you'll get something confused and amateur (watch fifteen minutes of Buffalo Bill and the Indians and you'll know what I'm talking about). But let Robert Altman just dribble characters and scenery onto a movie screen the way he sees fit and you'll get something that's so wonderfully abstract yet familiar that you can't take your eyes off it. Nashville is the defining example of that process. It's one of the crown jewels of American film. Strongly recommended for the top shelf of any DVD collection.

Dan's Disc Rating: 9.5 outta 10

Cheers,
Dan