[Correlating with the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 2010 Winter Nights Film Series, ZapTown will be publishing essays each week on the films that will be shown in the series.  The museum will be presenting Nashville on Friday, January 15. The show at 7 p.m. - $9 Public/ $5 Members/ $7 students with ID. For a full schedule, visit the IMA's website (http://www.imamuseum.org/toby) or our Lead Story on The Toby (http://www.zaptownmag.com/2009/12/lets-go-out-to-the-movies-the-toby - film schedule is located at the bottom of the article).]

Past Essays on Zaptown:

The Blue Angel

In the 1970s, when it came to film, anything was fair game. You had your throwback movies and homages like American Graffiti and Chinatown. You had your inner-personal and socio-psychological films like Vanishing Point and Taxi Driver. There was the deep impact science fiction environmentalist film Silent Running and the deep struggle of Brian’s Song, just to name a few.

Because of society’s contribution and the state of affairs, popular culture in the 1970s were taken to the extreme.

The Vietnam War became a focal point based on governmental misconceptions, a civil rights outbreak, the 1973 oil crisis and mass inflation along with the deflation of the US dollar turned the country into an economic mess. And the leader of the pack was, of course, Nixon and Watergate. Film no longer became an avenue for escapism as it did an avenue of protest and realism.

Robert Altman felt no different. However, he came up with a unique story and a film experience that turned into what would be considered a true cinematic accomplishment. You may know Altman more for his films like M.A.S.H. and Thieves Like Us, but 1975′s Nashville was the creme of the crop for this director.

What he did was so oddball and strange that the formula would have made it or failed miserable. Altman took the realism of political affairs and blended them into normal everyday society and turned it all into a zany crusade. This was not your Cabaret. Altman let go of every inhibition he could think of and let the story take control and run wild.

How did he do that? He took a lofty 24 characters and set them loose in a short time span (the film takes place over the matter of a week). I will not get into the all-star cast that he came up with as there is an amazingly in depth synopsis and character analysis here: http://www.filmsite.org/nash.html.

Filming Nashville was like filming a documentary to a wild party. Altman’s methods was to just stand back and let things take their natural course. And by doing this, he was able to see things in people that most people would not normally notice.

He uses Nashville as the pinnacle for the film because the city is considered and iconic figure for the heart of America. Home to country music, it’s the city for the American people. He also uses it as a mockery — like an American Fellini — the city is a playground for an avid social and political circus gone amuck. It led to a very misleading reaction when the film was released. Critics and fans loved it while the mainstream country populous hated it, claiming it a disgrace not just to the city of Nashville but, in essence, to America.

Altman wants you on your toes and Nashville does a great job at keeping the audience on the move. Using multiple camera angles and full environments lit up, it gave for a wider range of movement and ease of flow to the characters. He loved surprises and in this rare moment of film history, he had the liberty to let the actors and actresses surprise him.

Sources:

A Movie Called “Nashville” by Ray Sawhill (Salon, June 27, 2000). http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2000/06/27/nashville.

Nashville: Altman’s Open Surface by Jane Feuer (Jump Cut: A Review Of Contemporary Media, No. 10-11, 1976, pp. 31-32). http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC10-11folder/NashvilleFeuer.html

Additional Resources:

Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman’s Masterpiece by Jan Stuart (Limelight Editions, August 1, 2004).

Altman On Altman by David Thompson (Faber & Faber; illustrated edition edition, April 4, 2006).