Review of Nashville (1975) by Sean C — 10 Oct 2011

Precisely the sort of film I should have expected to hate for its pretentiousness, convolution, and ambiguous satire, but I didn't hate it. Nor did I find myself impressed by it, though, and I will admit that there are probably layers of "Dollywood" satire here that I just didn't get and it didn't help that the movie labors to make you care about any of the 24 characters (Tomlin and Beatty's family being an exception).

Moments of tragedy always bubble beneath the surface as we catch glimmers of how unhappy many of these people are, but Altman's frequently congested style proved more tiresome than I ultimately had the strength to endure.

This is an almost impossible film for me to assign a rating because it was the first movie I watched that truly felt like checking one off the list. I can appreciate "M*A*S*H", but this just seems like a second Altman movie thrown onto the AFI list for the hell of it.

Maybe if I had been born 20 years earlier, I would find something cohesive to admire instead of just bits and pieces that I enjoyed set to a soundtrack that simply doesn't appeal to me.