Cover of Nashville

Robert Altman’s 1975 film, Nashville, was severely whittled down from eight hours (!) to two and a half hours long, and this is the only version we have. In this version at least, it is obvious that Joan Tewkesbury‘s script is shallow and biased toward ordinary Americans in the South.

Consider that every song the country-and-western top dog, Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson), sings is sanctimonious (not likely), but that he himself is arrogant and disdainful.  Consider that Suleen Gay (Gwen Welles), a likable waitress aspiring to be a country performer, is more or less a Catholic hypocrite, and deluded about her singing ability to boot.  And this is only the beginning.  It is not that the film invariably fails to be honest, but that only up to a point is it honest.  Indeed, in many plot elements there is mendacity as well.

It can’t be denied, however, that Nashville is wonderfully imaginative, with commendable scene creation.  An example is the funny sequence with the traffic jam after a car crash.  And there’s the scene where Keith Carradine sings “I’m Easy” to a concert audience while the camera catches the faces of the singer’s female conquests, erotic desire rising in a watching—and married—Lily Tomlin.  Granted, the actors’ improvisation in the film leaves me cold, but the actors themselves don’t.  They know what they’re doing.

As director, Altman is outstanding.  Unlike Tewkesbury.  The movie is a superficial mess which I do not regret having seen four or five times.

(500) Days of Summer, a 2009 pic, is not always clever—it can be gimmicky, as in its European art film references—but it certainly avoids being dull and utterly ordinary. It tells of a romantic affair between two young adults, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel), over a 500-day period. And as critic Deborah Ross points out, “For him, it’s love. For her, it’s a lark.” Happy days become few. Maybe Tom’s next girlfriend (Minka Kelly?) will take it seriously.

Although there is some crassness in the screenplay, charm arises as well. Tom suffers, but Gordon-Levitt is no Ingmar Bergman-guided actor, that’s for sure. He is passable, and handsome. Deschanel is passable and lovely. Scenarists Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber do a smooth and interesting job of holding chronological time at bay. Again, not dull. (500) Days of Summer has its virtues.

(500) Days of Summer, a 2009 pic, is not always clever—it can be gimmicky, as in its European art film references—but it certainly avoids being dull and utterly ordinary. It tells of a romantic affair between two young adults, Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel), over a 500-day period. And as critic Deborah Ross points out, “For him, it’s love. For her, it’s a lark.” Happy days become few. Maybe Tom’s next girlfriend (Minka Kelly?) will take it seriously.

Although there is some crassness in the screenplay, charm arises as well. Tom suffers, but Gordon-Levitt is no Ingmar Bergman-guided actor, that’s for sure. He is passable, and handsome. Deschanel is passable and lovely. Scenarists Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber do a smooth and interesting job of holding chronological time at bay. Again, not dull. (500) Days of Summer has its virtues.

A few weeks ago I reviewed the documentary film For Sama, which revealed violent, warring suppression in Syria. What has lately happened in Afghanistan is worse.

The Big Withdrawal there was not disgraceful; it was unspeakably disgraceful. It was vile. It is contended that Afghans who helped American soldiers (e.g., interpreters) should have been flown to third countries and vetted there before emigration to the U.S. occurred. We know all the absurd garbage that went on instead, including the abandonment of helpful Afghans.

The Left can’t govern. If Donald Trump was unfit to be president (morally), a representative of the Left is even more so.

The agony of motherhood and wanted prosperity is the central theme of 1937’s Stella Dallas, in which “A working-class woman [Stella] is willing to do whatever it takes to give her daughter a socially promising future” (imdb.com).

Here, a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty became a play and then a Hollywood movie directed by King Vidor. Neither too literary nor too theatrical, the film is pleasantly pictorial and sensibly paced. And unlike the silent film made of Stella Dallas, which I’ve never seen, it offers the actors’ voices—naturally beneficial. One wants to hear and not just see Barbara Stanwyck, whose Stella is appealing and ardent but no aristocrat. Astoundingly, she can handle a great deal if not quite everything. It is a terrific performance.