Director: Robert Altman
Screenplay: Joan Tewkesbury
Starring: Ned Beatty, Ronee Blakely, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Henry Gibson, Michael Murphy, Lily Tomlin
Running Time: 160 minutes
Genre: Comedy-drama
This film follows the numerous intersecting stories of a large group of people in Nashville, Tennessee, over a five day period in the run-up to a rally for a populist outsider candidate running for President. Most of the characters are involved to a greater or lesser extent in the worlds of music or politics.
This is a long, sprawling, epic comedy-drama with about twenty-four main characters, an hour of musical numbers and a multitude of interlocking storylines. The film was written by Joan Tewkesbury based on her own experiences of visiting Nashville, although as was often the case with Altman, much of the dialogue and many subplots were improvised on set. The large ensemble cast is impressive, particularly Ronee Blakely as an emotionally fragile singer, Geraldine Chaplin as a chatty BBC Radio reporter, Henry Gibson as a politically ambitious Grand Ole Opry star and Gwen Wells as an ambitious but talentless aspiring singer. It also features an early appearance by Jeff Goldblum as the silent "Tricycle Man", and Shelley Duvall as an eccentric groupie. It is a film that is very much a product of it's time. On the surface it is about Nashville, but really it is about where America was at politically and culturally in 1975, and scarily enough is still quite relevant today. It does require a lot of attention, and the length, loose structure and lack of a single overarching story may be off-putting to some viewers, but it is very rewarding, which is funny, dramatic and sometimes moving. It also has a great soundtrack.
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