Editor's Note: Still nursing that post-July 4th hangover? Check out some of these fine films and let the patriotism melt the headache away. And for more news and reviews of the summer's biggest movies, be sure and check out the CL Movies & Television site.]
Robert Altman’s masterpiece captured America in the ’70s like no other film, encompassing all of the decade’s confusion, disappointment and uncertainty. The film follows 24 different characters over a period of as few days in Nashville, just before a political fundraising concert. We take a peek into the lives of country music superstars, hippies, aspiring singers, mothers, producers, liberals, conservatives, radicals, Christians. We see how America has changed, and how our moral system had been skewed by Vietnam, Watergate, the Kennedy assassinations and the sexual revolution. Nashville illustrates perfectly what John Lennon meant by “strange days, indeed” on the cut “Nobody Told Me.”
This article appears in Jul 1-7, 2009.