Fresh from his success with such films as M.A.S.H. and McCabe and Mrs. Miller, director Robert Altman was one of a number of remarkably talented directors gaining attention in the early ’70s. In 1975, he unveiled the film that would become his undisputed masterpiece. With its huge ensemble cast of twenty-four actors, natural-sounding overlapped dialogue, intricately interwoven plot threads, and brief but pointed cameos, it was a potent allegorical collage that came to define Altman’s unique style.
Nashville is about a bunch of people who come together in the titular city over the Bicentennial long weekend for a concert and political rally. Some are famous country stars; others want to be. Some reflect the deep-seated conservatism of the South; others dress and act with a free-spirited looseness more characteristic of the hippie counterculture. One is a clueless, pretentious BBC documentarist trying to capture America with her intrusive microphone and tape recorder. Together, they’re a microcosm of a nation at a cultural and political crossroads—a nation of desperate, lonely masses still mourning the promise that died with the Kennedys, in the midst of sexual and racial revolution, and facing a future of empty slogans and mindless celebrity worship (both of which are satirized to great effect in the film’s opening-credits sequence).
Many of the country-singer characters are thinly disguised versions of real-life stars, from Loretta Lynn-like Barbara Jean (played by actual singer Ronee Blakely) to folk-rock trio Tom, Bill, and Mary. This gives the film an added layer of roman a clef realism, punctuated by a couple of cameos from Eliott Gould and Julie Christie, among others. With such a multitude of accurately drawn characters, Altman and screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury bring so many aspects of mid-70’s American life under their cynical scrutiny that the film demands multiple viewings.
What better place than Opryland, the mecca of down-home family-values music, to weave such a richly symbolic tapestry? The city of Nashville itself, with its odd mixture of ancient Greece and the barnyard, of rhinestone-cowboy allure and redneck showbiz tawdriness, is no less important a character than any of the two dozen others whose fates suddenly and shockingly converge at the Parthenon in the film’s unforgettable climax. When Henry Gibson’s traditionalist singer Haven Hamilton, his face a blank slate of disbelief, says “This isn’t Dallas. It’s Nashville,” it’s at once heartbreaking and hilarious. What happens next, though, is the perfect ending to a film that has only grown more trenchant and prophetic in hindsight.
Many of the cast wrote and performed their own songs in the film; Keith Carradine’s “I’m Easy” won the Oscar for Best Song. Nashville received nominations in three other categories (including two Best Supporting Actress nominations for Lily Tomlin and Ronee Blakely), but lost both Best Picture and Director to Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Robert Altman’s subsequent career has been hot and cold, with misfires like Popeye (1980) and Ready To Wear (1994) balanced by films such as The Player (1992) and Short Cuts (1993). Though none have equalled Nashville’s narrative brilliance or thematic significance, the adjective “Altman-esque” has become critical shorthand for films with multi-threaded plots and numerous major characters.