I just watched Nashville again for the third or fourth time so I could have it fresh in my mind for this here club of ours. I really love the movie.

I think Nashville presents a kind of unmasking of America, or at least part of America. Watching this movie is like seeing a crack in a "brave face" someone puts on themselves where some of the insecurities and hard times finally start showing through.

America was a hell of a place when Nashville was made and released. There was Watergate and Nixon's resignation, widespread unemployment, the Vietnam War was coming to an ugly end. . . and yet. . . what is Haven Hamilton singing when we first meet him in the opening of the movie? "We must be doing something right to last 200 years." It's almost like he's trying to convince himself of something. And what does he say after the shooting at the end of the movie? "This can't happen in Nashville". "This isn't Dallas". And finally "Somebody sing." He says it over and over. "Somebody sing". It's like he's trying to plug up a leak before his boat sinks. Reality has broken through and he's trying like hell to force things back to the way they were before. This is one of the major themes of the movie.

Another major theme of the movie is the unhealthy world of celebrity, "success", and unfulfilled dreams (everyone wants to be a singer or performer. . . even the magician who pops up here and there is constantly doing his act). This theme is best illustrated in the stories of my two favorite characters, Sueleen Gay and Barbara Jean.

In Barbara Jean's character we see the all-too familiar way in which the celebrity world--whether centered in Nashville or Hollywood--can destory people in the drive for fame and wealth. Barbara Jean doesn't want to perform anymore. . . in her on-stage meltdown she says she's worked non-stop since childhood. At this point she's just being exploited by her husband/manager. In fact it seems like everyone wants to use her, to exploit her. Even in her hospital room she can't get a moment of peace.

One of the most remarkable scenes in the whole movie is her near-breakdown in her hospital room when her husband/manager says that incredible line to her: "Don't tell me how to run your life, I been doing pretty good with it."

Barbara Jean's story only makes the other stories in the movie all the more tragic. Here is the dream everyone else--especially Sueleen Gay--wants. But we can see how much it's really worth. The other people have no idea. From the outside it all looks very glamorous.

Sueleen Gay's story (she's the tone-deaf, airport cafe waitress who wants to be a singer) provides some of the best moments in the movie. The striptease scene is one of the most painful to watch in the whole film.

In the first place, here we see the ugly face of the political relations of the populist Replacement Party candidate whose campaign we've witnessed throughout the movie. It's a bunch of horrible men throwing around cash in a back room. And here this poor woman is thrown to them like meat to a pack of wolves.

She finally compromises herself and agrees to strip because it might put her one step closer to being a star. She's promised she can be on stage with Barbara Jean. She want to be Barbara Jean. And what we know of Barbara Jean's story only makes Sueleen's story that much sadder. Gwen Welles, the actress who played Sueleen, is incredible in that political fundraiser scene and throughout the whole movie.

Altman's direction is never sensational in Nashville. He stays in a far-away wide shot in places a lesser director would've used close-ups or lots of editing. A shot he comes back to again and again is one that starts from a wide shot and slowly zooms in to a focal point. . . an action or a character's face. In this way he presents us first with a context, an environment, and then zeroes in on the character it's effecting. This shows both the way the world effects the characters and shows us how they're alienated from that world as well.

The assassination of Barbara Jean makes for a pretty disturbing end to the movie. Even more disturbing than the shooting itself, is what follows. After Haven Hamilton's pleading, a song is started up. And slowly but surely the whole crowd at the event begins to sing along. They've all just witnessed a murder, but they stand there singing just as if nothing at all had happened. They sing for quite a while. . . Altman lingers on the scene. The whole thing has the feeling of a happy ending. Of people coming together after a tragedy. It's almost pleasant until you consider the words they're singing: "You may say that I ain't free, but it don't worry me."

It's this delusional reassurance. . . like Haven Hamilton singing "We must be doing something right" at the beginning of the film that leaves you with the feeling that the whole cycle is about to start up again. The brave face we've seen falling apart for the past 2 and a half hours is going up again. It's all swept under the rug again. But only until the next cracks start to appear, that is, only until the tensions in such a society express themselves in another violent scenario.

"You may say that I ain't free, but it don't worry me."

Of course that's not a very hopeful idea. No one in the Altman universe--Altman most of all--is able to see a way out of this doomed cycle of events. Perhaps that's one of the director's flaws as an artist. Maybe he never fully worked through the problems he dealt with in his art. But what's there is pretty great anyway.

Altman was probably the best director of that whole "new wave" in American cinema--which probably started with Arthur Penn in the late 60s and lasted to the late 70s/very early 80s.

Nashville is one of his greatest achievements. Some of his other great films are "Thieves Like Us", "McCabe And Mrs. Miller", "The Long Goodbye", and "A Wedding". All of those and Nashville are my most favorite of his many films anyway.

You know, I think it's time for a major reassessment of that American New Wave period in film. Scorsese and Coppola have been considered the very best it had to offer for a long time now. I don't see it that way myself.

I much prefer the films of Altman, Arthur Penn, George Romero, Hal Ashby, and Michael Cimino for example.

I mean George Romero, for all his shortcomings, technical sloppiness, low budgets, and bad actors said more about American society than either Scorsese or Coppola at their best ever did.

Just my opinion of course.