Word: altmans
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...come to this, because the critics and the friendly folks at Gulf & Western (owners of Paramount, which distributed the film) seemed determined to push Nashville, even though they'd never liked that weird Robert Altman before, and had a hell of a time trying to figure out what to say about his new film. So when the onslaught of praise rained in, as much as for any picture in recent memory, it just about ruined the effectiveness of the film itself...
High expectations tend to be deadly with any Altman film. Most movies shine when their openings become public events--it's a long tradition for the two to intertwine. Some filmmakers almost appear to anticipate it. In Jaws, for instance, half the punch of the first scene comes from the publicity. Knowing what's going to happen makes an innocent event like a young woman skinny-dipping on a summer night doubly frightening. A movie like laws thrives in the public eye because it delivers the goods. The Exorcist procliamed that it had a couple of jackpots--the crucifix...
...THEY COULD never quite figure Altman out. "This is boring--it never goes anywhere," they'd say. "Why, you could put a camera in someone's living room and come up with this!" They had no idea of how to get a handle on the amorphous mass of an Altman film, even when they began, finally, to stop dumping on him. California Split, for instance, they found vaguely respectable. California Split was a journey into gambling culture--how desperation and betting work at the tables, at the track, and in people's lives. The language of the film was energy...
...Altman junked almost all the conventions the cook book critics go for--except the stars: he held out and focused on two major characters, Eliot Gould and George Segal. And even though both actors turned out excellent performances, they almost spoiled the film. It was as if they'd been given too much freedom, because Gould's happy-go-lucky interpretation made Segal's tortured gambler seem cliched, as though his problems were silly. Segal undercut Gould, too, making him seem shallow. With the actors canceling each other out like that, the film became curiously objective...
...bogus. One Nashvillean said they were kind of proud of the movie: another said that the reason Nashville hasn't opened there yet (although it has in twenty cities) was that a local film critic blasted it--particularly the music, which he called inauthentic--so mercilessly that Altman became infuriated. The director, who claims the film isn't about Nashville at all, started granting interviews to rival papers, and a week after the review appeared the distribution problems started. The charge about the music is ridiculous--it's infinitely more authentic that the current commercial "Nashville Sound"--but the people...