'NASHVILLE'......44 YEARS LATER......HOW'S IT DOIN' TODAY?

'NASHVILLE' (1975)     It's been a while since we took one of those cold, hard looks at some movie that took the world by storm during its era........

                   Influential film critic Pauline Kael went into multiple orgasms over this one.......an ambitious, massive social satire from the reigning king of make-it-up-as-I-go-along quirk, Robert Altman.

                     Altman carved out stunning late-in-life career by discovering  what kind of film he was making in the very process of making it.  It was artistically dangerous, seat-of-your-pants filmmaking that encouraged freewheeling improvisation among the large ensemble casts that Altman preferred to work with........and oh how his over-populated casts loved him for it.

                       'Nashville', a sprawling, 24 character epic set in the U.S.A's capitol of country music served as Altman's snapshot of the the country's post-Nixonian landscape.......

                        Tricky Dick was gone, but in Altman's random depiction of bustling, hustling 'Music City', Nixon's  legacy lived on.......greed, moral compasses gone haywire and worst of all, the kind of kneejerk, phony cardboard patriotism that perpetuated the Vietnam War long after everyone found out what a catastrophe it was.

                        It takes 170 minutes  for all of this to play out, with an inevitable climax touched off by......what else, a lone loon with a gun.

                        But 44 years years later, does it hold up?

                       Sporadic chunks of it do. But you've got to wade through the whole damn thing to pluck them out........

                        One huge chunk doesn't........Altman's reckless decision to let his cast members write their own faux country music songs for their characters to sing.

                       With a few exceptions, the songs are abominable.......condescending, snarky, self-satisfied doggerel that sounded like leftovers from 'Saturday Night Live' skits poking fun at country music.  And there's a lot of them. And they go on forever.  And the actors who sing them are no great shakes as singers either........

                      The fake, rotten songs really served to to undermine Altman's purpose here. Instead of a rousing attack on 'The Establishment' (as was his "MASH" in 1970), "Nashville" reeked of the Hollywood Elite thumbing their noses and sneering  at the the plain, simple folk of the Heartland. Altman and his cast refused to comprehend or understand the primal emotions and storytelling of country music (and its connection to its listeners).......they preferred to mock it.....poorly.

                      So let's turn to the stuff that's still good......Altman and his screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury were on to something with their creation of the avuncular, unseen populist Presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker.......who only exists as a voice spewing out his public address trucks that prowl the streets of Nashville.

                         For his never ending speechifying, it's clear Walker's touching a nerve with a fed-up populace.......promising to get rid of lawyers in congress. With his gift of gab and drain-the-swamp promises, he's a 1975 version of the snake-oil salesman who conned his way into the White House in
2016.

                         Altman and Tewkesbury's only misstep is having Walker launch an idiotic, ill-advised attack on 'The Star Spangled Banner' (cause no one can sing it properly and it was co-written by a lawyer)........it's a dumb move on Altman's part, much like the weak satire of the his cast's country music knockoffs.

                         And ironically, amid all the typical muttering, mumbling and half-spoken lines that go on between Altman's actors, there's one single moment that stays with us from the entire 170 minutes......a silent one. It's the pained, conflicted expression on Ned Beatty's face as his two deaf children try to communicate with him. In that one hurting, weary glance, you can feel a lifetime of his frustration, pent up anger and heartbreak......you sense his simmering impatience with the cruel twist of fate that left him with a physically disabled family.

                       One other subplot stayed with us involved a Grand Canyon-sized generational gap........the plight of Keenen Wynn's middle aged husband tending to his beloved, terminally ill wife.......and quietly outraged, saddened and deeply hurt by the clueless, callous insensitivity of his visiting air-headed nympho niece (Shelly Duval), who can't find a single minute to visit her dying relative.  Either one of these subplots would have made a better, more compelling movie than the entirety of "Nashville"

                       Like many 70's movies we've revisited, a lot of "Nashville"s heralded innovations now seem tired, dated and facile. It still stands as one of the era's cultural milestones, but I'm not sure anyone but hardcore cinema completists would want to watch it more than once.  1 & 1/2 stars
(* 1/2).   And to hell with those songs........