Review of Nashville (1975) by Simon T — 30 Oct 2007

Okay, it's Altman, which means I'm probably somewhat alone in loving this one - but it's a fantastic examination of fame in America, the cult of celebrity, and what goes wrong as people try to chase it.

It doesn't lay down the messages right in front of you - at first, you seem to be randomly glimpsing a bunch of people just wandering through a couple of days, some of them connected, some of them not - but what you end up with is a series of multi-dimensional portraits - as characters you'd dismissed as shallow fools are suddenly more, and as we see people we thought of as pleasant suddenly being insensitive and cruel. I can't explain why, or what, or how this works, but goddamnit, it just plain does. And it does it brilliantly.