Nashville (1975)

A minor controversy arose in the online film scene this past October, when Richard Schickel, film historian and critic for Time magazine, launched a scathing critique of Robert Altman in the LA Times. The occasion was a new book, Robert Altman: The Oral Biography, but Schickel spent most of the article denouncing Altman's personal failings, in addition to spouting out pithy attacks on his films ("To make sure the audience never quite understood what was going on, he overlapped dialogue..."). Schickel concludes that Altman's films are hopelessly dated, and will not "survive as anything more than historical curiosities."

A film like Nashville is undoubtedly emblematic of its times - what with the long hair, the hippies, the drugs, and the music. But what Altman manages to do is create a sardonic commentary on the times posing as a celebration of them. For a director whose films supposedly resemble "someone else's not-very-interesting drug haze," as Schickel claims, Nashville is quite critical of the 70s generation, revealing the hypocrisies that lie beneath the world of politics and the entertainment industry.

In describing Nashville, I am reminded of Mark Twain's preface to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: "persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." Like many of Altman's films, Nashville is essentially a series of character sketches and vignettes loosely tied to a main idea. The film follows no fewer than 24 major characters - a motley crew of hippies, folk singers, housewives, country stars, reporters, and political campaigners - as they descend on Nashville for a benefit concert. The candidate is Hal Phillip Walker of the "Replacement Party" - never seen, though his voice can be heard delivering speeches from his seemingly omnipresent van.

Using the campaign as a springboard, Altman paints a huge, sprawling canvas of American life. Altman follows dozens of storylines and fills each of his widescreen compositions with detail. His camera is fluid, constantly shifting perspective and revealing new details, making us an active observer. Aside from its technical feats, though, Nashville has grand thematic ambitions. The film is essentially an ironic response to Watergate; Altman contrasts the patriotic American ideals celebrated in the upcoming bicentennial with their seeming irrelevance in a disillusioned America. The whole tone of the film is set by the first song, a patriotic anthem sung by country star Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) that includes the not-so-inspiring chorus "We must be doing something right to last 200 years."

That song is the first of many in the film; Altman has even classified Nashville as a musical. Certainly the songs are central to the film, helping to establish mood and develop character. (Almost all of the songs were written by the actors specifically for their roles). One of the most famous is Keith Carradine's "I'm Easy," sung in one of the film's greatest scenes. Carradine's character, a womanizing folk singer named Tom Frank, takes the stage at a local bar and dedicates the song to "someone special who just might be here tonight." Three women - Tom's habitual fling, Mary (Cristina Raines), Geraldine Chaplin's kooky BBC reporter, and a groupie played by Shelley Duvall - all think that the song is about them. But Tom is actually playing to Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin), a housewife and gospel singer that caught his eye at a recording studio a few days ago. They go to bed, of course, but Linnea decides that the affair must go no further, and she returns to her family. Tom tries to incite jealousy by calling another woman, but Linnea remains strong and leaves with dignity. That scene alone, so rich with restrained emotion and subtle characterization, reveals what a terrific director of actors Altman was.

And it is moments like that which make Nashville so rewarding. For all of his cynical commentary on hypocrisy, Altman makes us genuinely care for his characters. So many of them seem adrift - the lonely old man with the dying wife; the waitress who wants to be a singer but can't sing; the country star's son, who manages his father's career but has no life of his own. In many ways, Nashville is about the ways that these characters envelop themselves in patriotic ideals, in country music - in anything - to make themselves feel better. That theme is there in the first song, and it's there in the last one. After an assassination occurs at the benefit concert, a wannabe country singer takes the stage to lead the crowd in a song called "It Don't Worry Me." "You might say that I ain't free, but it don't worry me," they all sing.

Is that song a stirring hymn of unity, or a feeble attempt to cover up a sad reality? Altman doesn't tell us what to think, and the film's ambiguity is what makes it so fascinating - and so frustrating to viewers like Schickel. Since seeing Nashville last month, I have read a number of reviews and essays concerning the film, but I am still far from penetrating its mystery. Altman once said that it depressed him when people told him they had seen one of his films, when what they meant was that they had seen it once. Coming from the man who made Nashville, you can see why.

****/****

Network (1976)

Sidney Lumet's Network, like The Graduate, is a genre-bender of such generational importance and undeniable power that it is at first easy to overlook its flaws. Most of these trace back to Paddy Chayefsky's script, one of the most acclaimed in American film. It is an astute and prescient satire of American culture, yes, but it also has the unfortunate tendency to devolve into caricature and a lot of speechifying.

Network focuses on the fictional, lowly-rated television network UBS. When longtime, washed-up news anchor Howard Beale (Peter Finch) is fired, he announces on the air that he will kill himself. The controversy attracts much attention, so Beale is exploited and reinvented as "the mad prophet of the airwaves." Max Schumacher (William Holden), Beale's longtime friend and colleague, is fired and replaced by programmers Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) and Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), who will stop at nothing to get high ratings.

What is admirable about Network is the prophetic nature of its satire. Many things about Network are unbelievable, but the trashy Howard Beale Show looks more and more familiar every year. Years ahead of his time, Chayefsky seems to have predicted today's profusion of tawdry talk shows and mindless reality TV. And yet he is not so naive as to assume that things were ever entirely different. The film's moral center is Max Schumacher, Holden's character, who fancies himself an emblem of respectable journalism. Yet even he goes along with the Beale hysteria at first, only protesting when he is fired. No one is let off the hook in Network - least of all the TV viewers themselves, who are portrayed as passive, complacent players in the whole machine. An extremely cynical view, yes, but one the film expresses quite cleverly. In the movie's most famous scene, young people from all across the country, prompted by Beale's mad ramblings, yell out the window that they're "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore," a line regurgitated by an eager audience before each taping of the show. It is a frightening scene, and one that perfectly expresses how the masses can get behind a mindless catchphrase while thinking they are saying something meaningful.*

That is a skillful device, but much of Chayefsky's script suffers from a lack of such invention. Rather, he resorts to characters dishing out carefully worded monologues. Mind you, they sound great - until you realize that no one speaks that way in person. Chayefsky's script also suffers from tonal inconsistency, bouncing somewhat incongruously from satire to farce to drama. And many of his supporting characters are goofy caricatures; actors like Peter Finch, Ned Beatty, and Robert Duvall have little to do but rant and rave. The only actors who manage to give fully rounded performances are Faye Dunaway, William Holden, and Beatrice Straight in a small role as Holden's wife. Holden, especially, is terrific, injecting his role with sarcastic bite while remaining a likable, flawed character who is fully aware of his faults and limitations.

If there is one person who elevates Network to something greater than the sum of its parts, I am convinced it is Sidney Lumet. The director lacks any obvious auteurist touches, but as with 12 Angry Men, he does a superb job of building dramatic tension. Network also reveals that Lumet has a talent for comedy, and he never lets the film become too self-important. Finally, Lumet and his cinematographer Owen Roizman create a series of memorable images, from the famous "mad as hell" scene to the final, indicting shot.

In the end, the overall effect of Network is so powerful that its many imperfections almost seem not to matter. In one of the film's most affecting scenes, Holden asks Dunaway to love him, "primal doubts and all." She cannot accept him that way, but I embrace Network, inherent flaws and all.

Verdict: B+

*I don't mean to get political, but I keep thinking of this video.