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I was floored by this movie. In the summer just
prior to the bicentennial, Altman tracks 24 fully (and for the
most part sympathetically) drawn characters during the five-day
build-up to a political rally cum Country Music celebration. His
camera meanders in an aimless, almost impatient, fashion from
character to character; never really stopping to adumbrate (yet
alone contemplate) any personality point or plot development, but,
instead, simply insinuating its way into the Nashville (Music
City) milieu in which these people currently live. And the plot
barely even flirts with the conventions of linear narrative;
every scene seems to be in medias res and the only connecting
device is the sloganeering (and equally aimless) bull horn of the
independent presidential candidate: Hal Phillip Carter (??). As a
result, the movie unfurls as an intricate (and hugely engaging)
come-on to the audience; coyly and continually flirting as it
does with an indelible (albeit ineffable) sense of both potential
resolution and potential dissolution -- an absolute delight; I
loved it all . . . Then the movie hits its unanticipated, and
tragic, end point: troubled country legend Barbara Jean is
assassinated, Nashville fixture Haven Hamilton beseaches the
crowd, “Sing! Sing! We're not like the rest, we're Nashville”,
the wannabe legend Donna Reese (??) leads the crowd through the
gospel-like anthem “I May Not be Free, but it Don't Worry Me”,
and the camera closes with an upward swing from a huge American
flag, to Nashville's “Parthenon”, to the empty sky
– a montage which (appended as it is to a non-linear
narrative) functions as both narrative conflict and denouement,
and which causes the film to resonate on all kinds of levels. I
was left with a feeling of WOW! . . . the above windy prose. As
to what it all means, well that may or may not emerge as our
discussion moves along. (Full Stop)
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