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Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 11. May 28 1979

Film — Don't Miss Nashville!

Film

Don't Miss Nashville!

This Tuesday (May 29) the Student Association is screening Robert Altman's Nashville (Memorial Theatre, 2.15 pm). It's one of about half a dozen really good films they're showing this year, and well worth skipping lectures or selling your grandmother into slavery to see.

Altman is perhaps the most innovatory and exciting (and certainly the most prolific - he's released three new films in the States within the last year, all of which were still waiting to see) of the present generation of American film-makers. Whereas directors like Lucas and Spielberg and Coppola (their films have been the top grossers of all time) remain basically traditional in their approach to the medium, Altman is continually experimenting. Films as diverse as Mash, Three Women, and Buffalo Bill and the Indians, evidence the different directions he has moved in, in both content and form, in his career. Three Women is his most stylistically adventurous work to date, and as such is a resounding success. Until this film Altman's main centre of interest has usually been the sound track. The soundtrack to Three Women is certainly very clever, packed with aural jokes, but in this film the visuals demand our closest attention, particularly the way selected colours (blue, yellow and pink) and the grotesque murals are used in the narrative. Perhaps he felt held already developed manipulation of the soundtrack to its logical conclusion. Because this is (part of) what he achieves in Nashville.

Sound and Vision

Nashville is a startlingly original film, and much of the credit for this, as I've suggested, must go to Altman's careful control of what we hear. Basically, he filmed most scenes of the film with multiple centres of interest (that is to say, with 3 or 4 different activities or conversations going on within the cameras range), itself a result of having several major characters all as important as one another and all involved in different plots. He recorded each of these conversation etc. separately, and then in the sound mix balanced them out against each other so that either a) we hear one more clearly than the others, and pay attention to it, or b) we hear every thing that's going on, and have to choose for ourselves what we're going to pay attention to. That's kind of a simplified version of the technique, but I hope that you can see that it results in very stimulating viewing. The viewer is forced to participate in the creative process. God that sounds pretentious, but the net result of it all is that its possible to see Nashville a second or third time and see quite a different film.

This playing around with the soundtrack is first prominent in Altman's work in Mash, where often conversations overlap both each other and the divisions between scenes, and the characters themselves fool around with public address systems. Given this awareness of the potential of control of sound, it was only natural he should go on to make a film centred on the music industry.

The American Nightmare

And so at last to what Nashville is about. To wit: a zany, kaleidoscopic view of bicentennial celebrations in the country-music capital of the world. A notable feature of most Altmans films is that they are distinctly American, and Nashville is no exception. While Three Women makes some devastating sideswipes at the consumer culture, and Mash stampedes whole herds of sacred cows, Nashville methodically and savagely demolishes the entire American dream. Not only that, but it brilliantly captures the fatalistic atmosphere of post-Watergate political paranoia. Its shock climax, through, runs so close to slapstick as to mix tragedy with farce, and the final effect achieved is one of catharsis, a rediscovery of strength and a note of genuine hope.

Enough jargon. Nashville is an energetic hilarious, and very rich film, and it contains more fine performances (especially from Ro-nee Blakely as the country-and-western queen on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Geraldi Chaplin, Keith Carradine, Karen Black, Lily [unclear: lin], Barbara Harris etc. etc. etc.) than you're likely to get by touring all the movies at present on in town. One of me very best English speaking films ever.

Something Completely Different:

Another film worth seeing is Michael Thornhill's The FJ Holden, showing at the Majestic. Screened first at the Film Festival last year, it's now on release and being plugged on the basis of its cars, sex and [unclear: Au-] chunder appeal. All that it has, but don't 'be fooled. It's actually a very sharp satire on suburban life Down Under (especially the roles both sexes are forced into) that's embarrassingly close to home. The details are right down to the concrete garden gnome hurled through the lounge window. Recommended.

A Polish Perspective

I was lucky enough to get to talk to Polish film director Krzyszt of Zanussi when he visited the country a few weeks ago. However, as I didn't take notes (and was three—quarters sloshed at the time anyway) I won't attempt to quote him (I'll just plagiarize other people's quotations instead, and hope they're accurate.) I will, though, recommend his work highly. In conjunction with his visit the Film Commission screened Behind The Wall, a film he made in 1971 for Polish television, and it was very good indeed. A small, modest feature - an encounter between two people, a scientist (Zanussi himself trained to be a physicist before abandoning that career in favour of film) and the woman he must turn down for a job. Something well within the scope of New Zealand's present resources, but more perspective, more eloquent, more relevant, if you like, than anything made here that I've yet seen (with the possible exception of Vincent Ward and Tim White's A State of Siege, which is still awaiting a Wellington release). His most recent film, Camouglage, is booked for this year's Film Festival. One to look for.

Scientist and Artist

A couple of things make Zanussi particularly interesting as a director. Firstly, there's his background in science. Its influence could be strongly felt in Behind The Wall (and apparently the rest of the films too.) Not in any cold, clinical way, nor in the mere fact that his protagonists are themselves scientists, but in the sense one gets of a questioning, a controlled probing into what makes people tick, what shapes their own values and the way they relate to others. In Behind The Wall the camera closes in like a microscope on the characters, never flinching from the centre of interest. As their conversation becomes more and more personal and soul-baring, there are fewer and fewer cuts. This fascination with the uniquely human, Zanussi suggests, was part of the reason for nil disillusionment with science. 'My interest', he says, 'was more in people than in matter.....Perhaps I had to understand very early on that physics was unable-that science was unable — to give universal answers to many philosophical and elementary questions about the nature of our existence.'

Being a film-maker in Poland also has interesting influence on his work: '........ there are two interfering elements: difference of systems and difference of cultures You are an extension of the Anglo-Saxon [unclear: of] American conception of life, we are not-are Europeans. You are living in a [unclear: Capita] country, and we are not. Both these things are responsible for totally different [unclear: outlo] on things. You are probably aware of [unclear: soi] economic differences, while our production is totally subsidized. We get our money regularly and it is not connected with the income films make. It is easier to explain-or more difficult to explain — that this conception is considered completely natural, because film, and indeed all our cultural needs are considered elementary needs, whereas in this country they are not.

'If you look at semantics....when you say "success" in your language you naturally this "commercial success", whereas for us it is a [unclear: ect] pattern of speech to say a film was [unclear: "very] popular but totally unsuccessful". It mean [unclear: the] it was stupid, bad. Of course many people [unclear: feed] it, but it is not quantity that decides [unclear: we] have in mind other criteria like, for example Would people remember this film? Would this film or this novel influence their life or their attitudes? If it doesn't, it does not [unclear: roter] if they have not seen it or not - they may all have seen it and forgotten it. So you [unclear: u tand] that the fact that films are subsidize is natural for us, something that should be done

'Film is more important in terms of the health of society, in terms of the proper [unclear: fuctioning] of society. From that point of view we have a chance of getting money to make our next film each time without many problems. I have to have a script approved and this is another chapter because whatever is subsidized by the State is controlled by the State and the State would not permit me to make things which express ideas [unclear: contradic] to the policy of the State. But there is a [unclear: certain] margin of tolerance and freedom of [unclear: el] ression, which I try to explore in my films.'

(Quotations thieved from Cinema Papers)

Paul Hagan

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