Change Your Image
baseballandjazz
Reviews
Nashville (1975)
Nothing less than a snapshot of late 20th century America
Robert Altmans lofty reputation seemed to me completely undeserved... until I saw this film, that is. 'Pret-a-Porter' and 'The Company' were taxing, to say the least. 'The Player' was entertaining, though a little self-referential (a filmmaker critiquing Hollywood), 'Vincent & Theo' quite moving . None of these prepared me for a recent screening of 'Nashville'.
The film is a tapestry of intertwined lives set in that quintessential home of Americana; Nashville, Tennessee. The first 2O minutes are pure chaos. A rabble of barely-outlined characters metaphorically trod on each others toes. Altmans trademark overlapping dialogue adds to the bustle. Various celebrated and unknown out-of-towners and down-home locals arrive at the airport for a country music fair, looking to make their name, make a story, make a president, or simply to make a killing. Meanwhile, studio-based recording stars Haven Hamilton (a rhinestoned and coiffured Henry Gibson)and Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin) battle to be heard over sub-par piano players, studio hangers-on and gospel choirs. The ensuing motorway pile-up seems to epitomise America as a collision of competing attitudes, creeds, colours and cultures, a circus of noise, vulgarity, greed and showbiz.
SPOILERS AHEAD
And yet...from here, beginning with the oddly comforting oasis of Reese's deaf son miming and signing his pleasure at swimming (yet another voice struggling to be heard), the characters branch off and re-combine, each gaining their own colour and depth until, at films climax, their attitudes towards the city and their reason for being there have supplied the viewer with empathy and insight into the whole troupe. The overall feeling I gained from the film was of everyday people struggling to stabilise their society and improve their lot in the face of interference from powerful outsiders (e.g. sleazy political fixers who denigrate them as 'hillbillies', patronising marble-mouthed BBC reporters), and their own prejudices, flaws and resentments.
Both Reese and her husband, pillars of the community, are tempted to infidelity. Waiter Wade Cooley (Robert DoQui) grudgingly serves his well-off white employers until he can leave for (predominantly black) Detroit. He drunkenly berates black country singer Tommy Brown as a sellout: "the whitest ni**er in town". Talentless Candide-figure Albuquerque (Barbara Harris), a would-be singer, is exploited by misogynistic businessmen. Hamilton's wife tearily laments JFK's assassination and rails against the pervasive anti-catholic feeling she sees as the motive. Sexism, racism, religious bigotry- no wonder Tenneseeans reacted so badly at the time of the films release.
A friend of mine recently visited Nashville and noted the genuine humility, mannerliness and lack of cynicism people displayed there. Everywhere in this film we see the same, despite the divisions and hypocrisies. Even Hamilton, a seeming despot at films start and a hokey sentimentalist on stage, is trying to contribute to a renewal of his community. He grooms his son to be a lawyer and leader, to escape the poverty and powerlessness of his own upbringing, and considers running for political office in a devils bargain with the mysterious, messianic presidential candidate Hal Philip Walker. If the film has one central allegory it is the non-appearance of this 'Replacement Party' redeemer, who, among his campaign promises, intends to gut Capitol Hill of casuistic, Machievellian lawyers and reform the electoral college system (I suspect he'd be a shoe-in, even today). In his place, what do the plain folk of America get? Casual, meaningless violence, the shocking scapegoat-killing of the powerless, the infirm and the innocent, and a cynical, vacant exhortation to carry on as normal. No matter what fresh outrage, what abuse of power, no matter how deep the divisions, as the song goes, "it don't worry me". A new singer steps up to the mic, a new star is born to distract you from your problems. The song remains the same to this day, and that is why I would urge anyone interested in American democracy and society to watch this film carefully.
A change is gonna come.
El sol del membrillo (1992)
time's incessant march
The few people I know who have seen this film decry it's slow pace and its representation of art as a staid, dull, mechanical process, seemingly devoid of lateral thinking and inspiration. Where is the spectacle, the excitement, the redemption in this painters seeming failure? I, on the other hand, found it very moving because it is, for me, not about ideas of art and genius at all, but concerns more basic human values and experiences, such as love, affection and loss.
Possible SPOILER ahead:
This production is no salutary celebration of art or of the work of López himself. It progresses in a linear fashion as it follows the creation of a single artistic project, a painter's attempt to capture the autumn light on the quince tree in his back garden.
Part written by Erice and the painter López, it is not a documentary in the strictest sense, but a revelatory meditation on looking, representation, memory and the passage of time. The reason it feels so demanding to the film viewer is because it requires of them to slow their way of looking to that of the painter, a profession which is often laborious and banal, despite its associations of glamour.
At this pace we begin to notice the subtleties of the natural environment; here the play of light on a fruit tree. The impossibility and futility of freezing a moment of pleasure as a representation is the overriding theme in what is a very gentle kind of tragedy.
Lopez's endeavours, thwarted by changes in seasons, weather and light, are only symptomatic of the very basic human need to stop time, to carry mementos of happiness and to be close to the objects of our affection. If the viewer is alive to the films undercurrents, you can see this sense appear in almost every scene.
With repeated viewings, the film's humour and real humanism become apparent. Unique and highly recommended.