Nashville

Robert Altman was probably the hippest director in Hollywood when he decided to take on the capital of Country. This was 1975. America was gearing up for the Bicentennial celebrations and trying to lay Watergate to rest… Altman imagined a grassroots Presidential campaign cultivating the C&W constituency — thus supplying a focal point to his satiric panorama. But with 26 actors getting more-or-less equal screen time and half of them singing their own tunes, it’s a bit like an open mic night at the Opry. Half the time you don’t know whether to laugh or cry — which is just how Altman wants it.

Everywhere you look there are vignettes to savour: Geraldine Chaplin’s wicked caricature of an excruciating BBC journalist is one extreme; Lily Tomlin’s sympathetic mother of two is at the opposite end of the spectrum. Keith Carradine ambles off with the musical honours for two soft folkie anthems – but it’s not a soundtrack you’ll covet. Nashville may not match MASH for farcical hilarity, but of all Altman’s movies it’s probably the most influential, the richest in embarrassments.

Aug 6: Intro by filmmaker and educator, Professor Harry Killas

Still the best movie ever made about America and a source of consternation to several decades of the domestic songwriting industry…Robert Altman’s 1975 epic of political mobility, human sprawl, alienation and the marketing of the authentic just grows more and more relevant to being alive. The pointillist bits of tragedy and rapture that we glean from social media feeds today are all there in this deeply human tapestry — the technology is alien, but the emotions are all too relatable. An RPG of circumstance and ambition, a slow-motion collision between fame and infamy, and a wrenching musical about an industry built on hard-won personal truth, Nashville is a daunting masterpiece that remains deeply accessible.

Jason Shawhan, Nashville Scene

It’s a musical, it’s a political parable, it’s a docudrama about the Nashville scene. But more than anything else, it is a tender poem to the wounded and the sad.

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

An orgy for movie-lovers… a pure emotional high… the funniest epic vision of America ever to reach the screen.

Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

Has there ever been a more sprawling, shaggy, tragicomic portrait of the American experiment than Robert Altman’s musical mural of a movie?

David Fear, Rolling Stone

Harry Killas is Professor and Assistant Dean in the Film + Screen Arts program at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. His most recent documentary films include Collective Agency about a group of seniors who became photo-artists in late life, and Greek to Me, an autobiographical documentary about his family and ethnic identity. His research/ filmmaking theme areas include education, the arts, and social, political and other histories. As a curator, Killas programmed seven seasons of the series The Image Before Us: A History of Film in British Columbia at The Cinematheque.