Genre Guesstimation – Nashville (1975)

The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

This month’s Genre was chosen by Sherise of the Girl Who Loved to Review and she chose Movies from the 1970’s as the Genre for September.  If you want to still submit a movie, the deadline is 25 September. Just send it to me at 70s@movierob.net

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of Movies of the 1970’s…

“Who do you think is running Congress? Farmers? Engineers? Teachers? Businessmen? No, my friends. Congress is run by lawyers. A lawyer is trained for two things and two things only. To clarify – that’s one. And to confuse – that’s the other. He does whichever is to his client’s advantage. Did you ever ask a lawyer the time of day? He told you how to make a watch, didn’t he? Ever ask a lawyer how to get to Mr. Jones’ house in the country? You got lost, didn’t you? Congress is composed of five hundred and thirty-five individuals. Two hundred and eighty-eight are lawyers. And you wonder what’s wrong in Congress. No wonder we often know how to make a watch, but we don’t know the time of day. ” – Hal Walker

Number of Times Seen – 1 (6 Sep 2015)

Brief Synopsis – Over the period of a few days, we get to see the world of Nashville through numerous unrelated characters as they all converge on going to a rally.

My Take on it – I am a fan of movies with an actual plot, and this one feels like it just meanders along for two and half hours trying to get somewhere but really just going in circles.

Robert Altman’s forte was always to create long movies that are basically many short generally unrelated stories that somehow come together at the end.

I recognize the uniqueness of his approach and from that perspective, he succeeds in this movie, but personally, I need a bit more in order to enjoy a movie.

Many of the characters just weren’t interesting enough and eventhough I knew the point was that even in life not everything is interesting too many scenes dragged on and bored me.

IMHO, movies are meant to have some kind of coherent storyline and this one just really didn’t.

Bottom Line – Not the biggest fan of Altman’s kind of film-making technique despite recognizing the uniqueness of it.   Found many of the characters uninteresting and was waiting to see some kind of coherent plot…which never appears.  The movie dragged in certain scenes and was distracting despite it being created like life just like that.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – Robert Altman originally wanted Susan Anspach to play Barbara Jean, but she refused because she wanted more money. Ready to film in Nashville with no one cast in the role, Altman at the last minute offered it to Ronee Blakley, who was working as a back-up singer in Nashville at the time and had contributed some songs to the film. Blakley ended up receiving an Academy Award nomination for her performance.(From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Not at all in my opinion.  The story as a whole was interesting, but I’m not the biggest fan of the way Altman tries to create one big story by fusing together so many little ones.

Rating – BAFTA

_______________________________________

Check out my *updated* movie stats here

To see my reviews of Oscar Winning Performances check out this link

To see my reviews of all Oscar Best Picture Winners click here (now complete)

Here is a link to my movie index A-Z