Let's get the obvious out of the wa first. Nashville is a Robert Altman film and that's as close to a guarantee of a well directed, well acted film as one's likely to find in 70's cinema. However Nashville is also an almost three hour film and for its duration and amount of talent involved the payoff is not what one would expect.
Now what is it that we all look for in movies of Nashville's calibre? Why do we ask in exchange for our money and undivided attention to the screen? I'd say it's little moments of insight; into ourselves, human nature, the world by and large. Nashville has them. So what's the problem you say? The problem is that they're buried and suffocating under the enormous weight of the rest of the movie, a barrage of country and western songs, five or ten actors crammed in every other shot, three or four people talking one over the other, a narrative slump of miniplots that criss cross in every scene. Typical Altman quirks yes but here they trump what in other cases they help surface: substance.
The double axis Nashville revolves around is music and politics. An interesting combination subject in and off itself. Altman follows a reverse process, he wisely takes these two universal concepts and limits their scope significantly, music becomes the country scene of Nashville and politics a political convention of the Replacement Party. Altman lets the universal spring from the specific, for in the end of the day, despite man's countless efforts to prove the opposite, we have more in common than not. A naive, almost pathetic waitress's dream of becoming a country singer should resonate as powerfully in every culture. In that sense Nashville is more about human beings, their dreams, ambitions, secrets and inadequacies than it is about music or politics.
The politics part of Nashville is handled equally breezy and smart. Politics is largely an abstract concept for the average person, an unseen, unknown force that magically appears in television screens, newspapers and radios and governs our lives. Altman translates that same essence in the form of a political campaign van that appears throughout the movie, the unseen speaker making promises of change with a monotonous voice. The actual presidential candidate he represents never appears in the movie. He remains elusive and unseen.
However well crafted and intelligent in the handling of theme Nashville may be, in the end it's those little moments of insight into human nature that count. The charming, young country singer talking on the phone with his girlfriend while the older, married woman he just had sex with prepares to leave the room, unable to hear what is being said. The husband of said married woman who has his suspicions about the strange phonecalls his wife receives hits on the naive waitress that wants to be a star. The waitress whose lack of talent is only surpassed by her naive ambition that is driven to do a striptease in a room full of men with the promise of singing with country star Baby Jane. Baby Jane is a popular and beautiful country star only on the outside, on the inside she's fragile, neurotic and empty.
The problem with Nashville is that those little moments of insight are dwarfed by the entirety of the movie. Many of the singing scenes for example should have been left on the cutting room floor - not everyone is a country fan after all, "we get the gist now move on". In the end the way I see it is that if I'm gonna give you almost three hours of my life, you better have something really important to say. Nashville is only mildly important and not as entertaining as it would have you believe.
