An interesting detail in Joan Tewkesbury’s screenplay for Nashville is that the events unfolding over the course of five days for 24 major characters are happening against the backdrop of the 1976 Presidential race. Given that a character collapses from heat exhaustion some way through the proceedings, the season during which the film is set must be in the summer of 1975, and since director Robert Altman’s movie was released that very summer, one could theorize that the filmmakers either intended to release the film as the ultimate kind of contemporary portrait or stumbled into the best possible timing for their movie to reach audiences. It would be a good theory, considering that, despite the satirical leanings of its observations, everything about this movie feels like we are watching a documentary.
That isn’t quite the stylistic choice for which Altman is aiming here, although one does occasionally wonder whether, somewhere along the line, Tewkesbury or the film’s producers wanted to go that way with multiple overlapping stories following two dozen characters before Altman’s involvement in the project. It’s simply the fact that the filmmaker clearly wishes to establish a voyeuristic sense of observing and settling into the lives of these people for five days. Everything is laid-back, very little is dramatic or even dramatized beyond the fact that we are watching actors perform, and there is, rather defiantly, a lack of a three-act structure. The speeches of a fictional candidate run, as if heard on a speaker, over the action of the plot, sometimes even deliberately drowning out whatever anyone is saying.
The truth behind the production, of course, is that Altman and Tewkesbury had collaborated before, and as with a number of his other ensemble-driven works, both before and since, there was a heavy emphasis on improvisation and spur-of-the-moment rewriting onset. The verisimilitude that results is nearly overwhelming, as the copious time spent with each of the characters never overwhelms the ensemble or our experience with them. Distinct personalities arrive and remain, growing stronger in our mind until a great number of them meet with genuine heartbreak or happiness that hits us like an anvil.
The omnipresent Presidential candidate, Hal Phillip Walker, is never seen, only heard by way of the voice of Thomas Hal Phillips, but working through the laundry list of other characters is a fun, genuinely rewarding challenge. The backdrop here is a fundraising gala, at which a number of musicians are set to provide entertainment in exchange for building up Walker’s visibility. This includes a pair of studio sessions from country star Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) and gospel singer Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin), but also live performances from the troubled country singer Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley), whose recent stint in hospital for mysterious reasons has been cause for gossip, and a folk rock trio known as Bill, Mary and Tom (Allan F. Nicholls, Cristina Raines and Keith Carradine).
There really isn’t much in the way of plot or drama that arises out of these stories, except that it seems like everything on God’s green Earth happens to these characters as the next five days play out. Haven has arrived with a drunken companion in Lady Pearl (Barbara Baxley), who opines about the Kennedys in a speech of astonishing emotional nakedness and proselytizes the Catholic religion. A rivalry develops between Barbara Jean and fellow country star Connie White (Karen Black) after the latter plays the Grand Ole Opry, while a pair of untrained performers, the unkempt but talented Winifred (Barbara Harris) and the hopelessly mediocre Sueleen (Gwen Welles), meet with a different set of responses onstage. The trio of Bill, Mary and Tom is interrupted by divergent ambitions and a romantic tryst, while Glenn Kelly (Scott Glenn), a Vietnam War veteran, has arrived to see the show – in particular, Barbara Jean, of whom he is a devoted fan.
It seems impossible for there to be more stories, but at the risk of going too deeply into many of them, each of the character has some sort of management or parental figure overseeing their success or ruin, from Ned Beatty’s Del Reese (who manages both Haven and the Walker campaign) to Michael Murphy’s John Triplette (a sleazy political “consultant” only interested in publicity) and Keenan Wynn as the elderly uncle to “L.A. Joan” (Shelley Duvall), who wants to meet musicians and otherwise keeps to herself. Bustling about through all these storylines are two other figures, as well – Geraldine Chaplin as a reporter for the BBC and Jeff Goldblum as a mysterious tricycle rider who acts as a bridge between storylines.
This is a lot of material, clearly, and Altman navigates it with the grace and clarity of a master filmmaker. Every performance here – but especially those from Baxley, Blakley, Gibson, Harris, Tomlin and Welles – is a small acting university in itself, capable of fully understanding and inhabiting the closed but expansive world created by their director’s laidback, contemplative style. As many storylines as there are, there is nearly as much music, all of it worthy of big festival treatment and most of it written and performed live on set by the actors. Altman classified his film as a musical, on account of just how much music there is, and indeed, it pretty much qualifies. Haven’s opening patriotic anthem is as humbling and reverent as they come, and the numbers shared by Tom, Barbara Jean, and especially Winifred are showstoppers.
Nashville is easily one of a handful of films that can be called a true American masterpiece – an absolute joy to write about, to think about, and to watch for the ways it contemplates and interrogates distinctly American values and concerns (Walker’s speeches recall every restless progressive voter still in the first half of their life in 1975), while distilling all of them into this microcosm of a society still reeling from a pointless war. It establishes so much of what Altman was interested in exploring as a filmmaker that it still feels like lightning captured in a bottle.
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