It was never really about the country music. I suppose that is why I, a general country music hater, still enjoys it so immensely. The music is the colour, its industry is the texture, but it is not the fabric. That is something far bigger and more definitive, something bolder and revealing still several decades removed.
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Robert Altman's Nashville, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this summer (one of several great movies of that year, I may touch on another), is perhaps the most American movie ever made. It's very intentional on the surface -the film is draped all over in the American flag and obvious symbols and motifs of American national and cultural identity (Uncle Sam and the like); a strain of jingoism was already present in the industry it represents, and Altman was of course very conscious of the impending bicentennial the very next year -doubtless the country itself was in something of a fever for it. The movie is brazen with its American city title, the stars and stripes coursing through it, and an iconic poster of an anthropomorphic microphone encircled by stars and fireworks evoking Independence Day and American Pride more generally.
But then this is not exactly a distinct thing for Nashville. In the pantheon of American cinema there is no shortage of loud American iconography and cultural hegemony. Indeed most Americans probably wouldn’t consider its artifacts unusually patriotic, they are so used to the stars and stripes being everywhere and America being the natural centre of the universe. And perhaps then they’re not so inclined to see the film overall as the particular comment on America itself that the movie is. Yet from the first frame to the last, Altman and his writer Joan Tewkesbury paint a picture of America in microcosm as they saw it in the 1970s. And though contexts might be different, it very much holds true in the 2020s as well.
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Perhaps most strongly, the large collection of eccentric characters represent a wide swath of American archetypes and stories -white archetypes and stories that is. But even the marginalization of black characters like Tommy Brown (Timothy Brown), vainly pursuing a career in a musical genre historically hostile to black performers, or Wade Cooley (Robert DoQui), the sympathetic though never considered friend to a talentless singer, or the dozens of background Baptist singers or back-up dancers, is indicative of the general white American attitude towards black America, certainly in that time and (though perhaps more subtly so) in ours as well. They are a fringe of the Nashville scene as much as they are culturally at the root of its music. And there is of course no representation of other visible minorities -in Nashville as in America itself, they are quietly ignored.
In Nashville. That is how everybody is introduced at the top of the film. A rapid-fire promo that names every actor, interspersed with inaudible commentary, as though they themselves are the features of the grand festival -everybody pictured in a star-frame -once more the American spectre looming large. The characters you find in Nashville are the characters you find in America. And this announcer would have you know they are to be celebrated, every one.
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Our first figure might stand in for the symbol of Uncle Sam incarnate, Henry Gibson's Haven Hamilton, with thick mutton-chops and heavily accented, introduced singing a song of American exceptionalism on the eve of its two-hundredth birthday. There's a grandiosity to the piece and a passion in his voice as he sings it, and as he appears throughout the film these are as surely reflective in his character, who we learn is not only an industry heavyweight but a political opportunist laying the groundwork through his aesthetics and efforts to hobnob with celebrities (Elliott Gould and Julie Christie -perfect celebrities of the 1970s specifically) for an electoral run. A ludicrous proposal, he is a pretty naked charlatan with no political experience -but of course where else could he be successful in such a pursuit than America? Altman and Tewkesbury knew it, and in the decades since have been vindicated by it over and over again in consistently escalating ways. His wife Lady Pearl (Barbara Baxley) -perhaps a nod to Lady Bird Johnson- has a real fixation on the Kennedys, implying the same of her husband -which will be significantly alluded to in the film’s final moments- and while drunk she goes off on a perceived anti-Catholic bias within Washington. She is as much a cartoon as Haven, and there is something biting in how clueless she appears to be about the political sphere -the Hamiltons are flashy yet ignorant show-boaters, beholden to ideas of America that are divorced from reality. However incisive this was seen as then, it is true by a hundredfold now.
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Hamilton is framed in contrast to the twin stars of the Grand Ole Opry, enacting their own pseudo-All About Eve scenario, barring the fact that these women are the same age. Yet the rivalry between veteran festival darling Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakley) and hot newcomer Connie White (Karen Black) feels applicable and deftly resonant to the place of women in country music then as well as today.Not just the country scene of course -women in all kinds of public industries are frequently pitted against one another as they themselves are reduced to a single narrative marker. Barbara Jean has the misfortune of suffering heat exhaustion at the start of the festival, which gives Connie enough time to solidify her name with the fans, framed fairly implicitly by the establishment as Barbara Jean’s replacement -while she has to watch from a hospital room. The suggested mental health troubles of Barbara Jean as well speaks to the pressures imposed by fame and a cutthroat business. Her image of sweetness and humility is subverted, but not entirely dishonest. She has been made more cynical and more turbulent by her environment, as well as a fairly uncaring husband Barnett (Allen Garfield), who cannot understand her struggle. Barbara Jean is of course the tragic figure of the film, her situation reflecting the human costs of the American corporatization of music. Connie is likewise a victim here, her bombastic and glamourous persona no doubt heavily manufactured. What she’s really going through we don’t get the chance to learn, but it can be inferred -Black occasionally letting a scrap of honest humanity through the visage.
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They are the stars that have made it, but Nashville is also a place for those who have not, but desperately wish to. On the fringes of the country music insiders are a pair of aspiring singers whose paths through the movie take wildly different turns. One is Sueleen Gay (Gwen Welles), a waitress desperate to break out in a music career but woefully blind to her lack of singing talent. The other we eventually learn after several failed attempts does have a great singing talent: Winifred (Barbara Harris), running away from an unsatisfying domestic life and a grumpy husband. Ignorant to what Barbara Jean and Connie have been put through, both are pursuing their grand American Dream in Nashville. It is of course the kind of narrative that the industry encourages -a myth of democracy and equity that anyone can make it with the right amount of work and passion. Both of these women have had idle dreams built up, and Altman finds humour in this but also distinct sadness. Sueleen's story is particularly sad and pitiable: trying so hard to find a platform and cultivate an audience, she ultimately is reduced to degrading herself, performing an impromptu striptease at a bar full of leering men, in order to get a faint shot at performing -she stands in for every sexually exploited woman in the American music industry and beyond, and even this does not break her woeful delusion. Meanwhile Winifred -who picks up the name Albuquerque- manages to find a handful of platforms, and though she can sing better than Sueleen, fails to command the attention she craves. She does however get what she desires in the end, albeit in a very twisted fashion on the heels of calamity. The death of one country star and potential birth of another instantaneously -and the crowd accepts it. You can't help but be drawn towards both these women and sympathize with their ambitions -for each it comes from a very soulful place. But they are dual encapsulations of the American Dream, in one its utter futility, in the other the cost that bears it out.
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These aren't the last performers on the roster though. There is the dysfunctional folk trio of Bill, Mary, and Tom -dysfunctional in that Bill (Allan F. Nicholls) and Mary (Cristina Raines) are married but Mary is infatuated with Tom (Keith Carradine), who in part due to Bill's controlling tendencies, is seeking to quit the group as he romances various women around Nashville. Tom and Bill are personality counterpoints as exist in many bands; it is amusing though to see them illustrated within the context of a low-vibe folk act. Of anyone in the film, Bill is the guy trying to play things by the established norms of the system and it isolates him from the more romantic-minded aspirations of each of his collaborators. The disconnect is nowhere better epitomized than when Bill, engaging with the festival, catches Connie's performance, while Tom and Mary, both rather ambivalent about it, go off together to have sex.
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To Mary's dismay however, Tom -the film's ubiquitous counterculture hero- cannot be tied down. And while he beds a few other women during his time in Nashville, there is one he just can’t get out of his mind. He is preternaturally drawn to Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin) a gospel singer and housewife involved in the Grand Ole Opry mostly through her husband Del (Ned Beatty). She is interested in Tom as well, but as something of a curiosity -she shares the other women’s attraction to his good looks and rebel sex appeal, but is far from obsessive. In fact, he represents more the thrill of adultery than anything else. And Tom is stunned by this, when after several attempts to charm her, they finally do have sex and she doesn’t fall for his attempts to provoke jealousy or attachment as is common with most of his women. But Linnea is no ordinary woman. She is more enigmatic to him than he is to her. He thought he had the power in pursuing the affair, but it was really her who held all the cards, leaving Tom the sex object. He becomes an inverse of the masculine archetype of a sexually domineering male hero, a little more perhaps like what American masculinity actually is vs. what it wants to be. In Linnea on the other hand we see an underside to the veneer of the wholesome Christian American housewife (and Tomlin is really perfect for conveying this, and not just because she’s gay). She evokes the lie of the nuclear family, and there is something very bold in this movie illustrating adultery from the woman’s perspective when it is so often depicted through men, and she gets away with it. It is okay though, because her husband is an ass.
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Del is Hamilton’s lawyer, and alongside John Triplette (Michael Murphy), a political agent for the radical Hal Philip Walker campaign, represent the institution around Nashville next to the talent who perform there. They are the men in suits of the film and naturally stick out as a result. Del is more of a conventional country bumpkin (in line with many a Beatty role), while Triplette evokes the big city businessman mostly disdainful of the country music festival and its denizens of both shallow populist singers and hippie fans. Del is a fitting contrast to his wife, more interested in entertaining Triplette when he comes over for dinner than paying any attention to his two deaf children, whom Linnea is never anything but sweetly considerate towards. Del and Triplette are later the pervy instigators of Sueleen’s strip-show and Del even hits her up, not showing near the restraint his wife had about Tom. In that cracked evocation of the nuclear family that Del and Linnea epitomize, his discretion is much more lascivious. Hers is about freedom, his is about lust. That he too is tied to that conservative political campaign as a local organizer is significant. Meanwhile Triplette is the stand-in for every slimy political operative you’ve ever seen, with the clear front in his tactics to get the various stars on board for his grand political gala at the close of the festival. He too is a purely American character, bred of that world where image, influence, and wealth are vital to attaining any kind of political power. Walker never appears on screen, but he’s got a scathing avatar.
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And of course what music festival would be complete without the fans and groupies, and there are a pair of notable ones in Nashville, sequestered in their own priorities. Martha (Shelley Duvall) who has returned home from Los Angeles ostensibly to visit her dying aunt but is far more interested in going to the festival and meeting the celebrities who have descended on the city. Then there is Glenn (Scott Glenn), a recently discharged soldier from Vietnam here to see Barbara Jean perform and hopefully meet her, whose life he believes was recently saved by his mother. Both are eccentric in their own ways, but Glenn is decidedly more earnest, perhaps the most honest and sincere person in the movie. And like his mother, he makes an effort to save Barbara Jean when it counts, immediately apprehending her shooter in the climax, but notably scarred over his potential failure to do what his mother did for one of his great idols. There is unexpected pathos to his story, and his uniform gives an added dimension to this and, in spite of the attitude of Altman’s earlier movie M*A*S*H, communicates a respect and nobility for U.S. servicemen. Martha on the other hand is portrayed with comic revulsion, ignoring her family in a time of crisis for her shallow obsession with celebrity. When her aunt passes, she even has the gall to skip the funeral to attend the closing performance. An indictment on celebrity culture if ever there was one -and while Marthas may be dotted all over the world, America remains the origin and greatest petrie dish of the celebrity phenomenon as we know it.
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Lastly, there is Opal (Geraldine Chaplin), a token non-American and possibly the nuttiest character in the movie, spending the duration as a BBC reporter trying to get close-up access to the major singers and organizers, in a manner that often inconveniences somebody involved. She always looks distinctly out of place, dressed eccentric and not for the weather or country theme. And she is intolerably chatty and high on herself, which some of her subjects have the patience for while others do not. Tom has enough of it at least to bed her, and she swoons for him as much as expected. However it is suggested the whole BBC thing is a sham via her incredibly shallow interactions, and further that she herself might just be crazy, as in the beat where she is seen walking and talking to an invisible camera crew in an empty bus lot. In the climax, she is virtually oblivious to the tragedy. In spite of this Opal is something of an audience surrogate as a complete outsider to the country music scene, and while there may be an argument she is an analogue either for non-Americans generally or the way America views foreigners (or Brits more specifically) as delusional or out of their depth in trying to comprehend America, I think she is a bit of a jab by Altman and Tewkesbury at their own audience taking in and judging these characters as though we are above them. To her, all of it is spectacle, as it is for us, but we have our foibles too.
And so it is a real collage of America, a texture of the nation, at that point in time specifically, but in a resonating way more broadly as well. These archetypes and personalities and their varied interconnections still feel pertinent to American identity and what it all entails. A culture of ego and celebrity, of hyper flamboyance and jingoism, of industry and capitalism and their distinctly bred forms of corruption and lasciviousness, refined and exported around the world. It is the ubiquity of America contained within one corner of its hegemony, where its people move in and out as comment on it and themselves -for good or bad. The resulting snapshot can be enlightening and sobering, given where it leads -where contexts of the time it was made in informed bluntly of exactly where it leads.
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The unseen Hal Philip Walker is a prescient figure, the rhetoric of his Replacement Party grievances notably similar to those of the modern-day GOP (though Walker, a touch extreme for his time, is rather tame next to his contemporary equivalents). He represents some real populist sentiments though, birthed of the political chaos of the time. Nashville was filmed while the Watergate hearings were going on and before the U.S. had formally pulled out of Vietnam. Political temperatures were rising amid scandal and corruption across multiple administrations. Real Walkers on the fringe were coming out of the woodwork, and Altman was naturally and rightly skeptical of them. Walker's car driving around blaring political slogans and other nonsense jargon has a descendant in one of the more dismaying corners of another ensemble film -Richard Linklater's Waking Life where this is the figure of Alex Jones. The distressing origin of America's current political mood can be glimpsed there in Nashville, a reflection of what were worrying signs of the times regarding the country's direction in the mid-1970s after years of unprecedented havoc. We of course hear that word again a lot these days. And what better a powder keg than a convention built on one of the few truly American art forms, that better than about anything else stands out as an image of America to the world.
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The fever pitch is in violence. A musician -and not just any musician but a beloved icon symbolizing in some respect the wholesome, charming Christian image the country music industry wishes to project themselves as- is shot on stage at the close of the festival. We don't know that Barbara Jean is dead -although the pattern of recent years this film came at the end of would indicate the affirmative. There is an eruption of fear and chaos, and Hamilton taking the mike insists "this isn't Dallas". Yet is it so outrageous that it could be? Especially when political interests are so intently entrenching themselves in the fabric of this popular culture. When such tumult is going on that governing forces are woefully inept to respond to responsibly. When violence remains the most available option of a people who have been bred on it as a core tenet of American identity and American might. Of course it could happen in Nashville. One could argue it inevitably would.
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And we thought that age had passed by the twenty-first century -until the last few years proved us wrong. But Robert Altman and Joan Tewkesbury had their fingers on the pulse of America in a way much more far-reaching than anyone realized. They captured its essence in this movie about a country music festival, and in a way they even presented the normalization of this character, seemingly exulting and excoriating it at the same time. Because in the chaos, the discord, the violence, distraction and diminishment are the only ways through. The moment is ‘saved’ by Winifred coming forward and singing to a great audience for the first time. This symbol of American fortitude and in this moment the American Dream -who naturally had to achieve it through the suffering of another- appearing in a context of reassurance. “It Don’t Worry Me”, she sings, soon joined by a chorus. And as the lyrics speak of all the miseries and depressions in the world and everyday life being swept aside by wilful ignorance, it is the American individualist ethos incarnate. “You may say that I ain’t free, but it don’t worry me.” By the time of the long-shot, the assassination is already forgotten -it won’t be acknowledged, no lessons will be learned. It won’t worry anyone.
America thrives on this philosophy. It did then and does now. But maybe it’s getting a bit harder to not be worried against the tide that has been built up. Maybe the Barbara Jeans and Winifreds aren’t enough anymore, and America’s character and characters are all too plain to see. Robert Altman showed them to us, framed in an accessible way. Were we paying attention then? We better be now.
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