As noted in a 2015 Scene cover story celebrating the film's 40th anniversary, Robert Altman’s masterwork Nashville is both a rich tapestry and a biting piece of satire exploring county music moguls and wannabes in a not-so-fictionalized version of ’70s Music City.
The stellar 4K DCP version of the film will show at the Belcourt on April 18 for the arthouse's Music City Mondays series. It will be presented in conjunction with venerable longtime venue Exit/In. After all, the club is the setting of one of Nashville’s best-known scenes, wherein Keith Carradine’s womanizing folk singer Tom Frank performs his affable ditty “I’m Easy” while different lovers look on in admiration, all of them thinking he’s singing to them.
Nashville screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury will introduce the screening with a prerecorded message. Exit/In archivist Stephen Thompson will also provide an introduction, with his edited/curated book Exit/In: Fifty Years and Counting available to purchase before and after the screening. Late, great Scene editor and critic Jim Ridley wrote one of the definitive pieces on Altman’s film back in 1995, detailing Nashville’s place in not only the history of cinema, but in the history of Nashville itself. Funny enough, locals didn’t embrace the movie like filmgoing audiences did across the county, with some taking offense at the way Altman portrays the country music scene.
The city hasn’t ever really embraced the film like you’d expect, perhaps because it holds some uncomfortable truths about the industry historically propped up by Nashville as a chief cultural export. Hey, sometimes the truth hurts, and if Altman’s film can be accused of anything, it’s brutal honesty.
If you’ve not yet taken in the tragic tale of Barbara Jean, or seen wannabe politician Haven Hamilton navigate the stage at the Grand Ole Opry, what better time and place to do it than at the Belcourt on a Music City Monday? Nashville is one of the most important films to come out of New Hollywood. Seeing it on the big screen at least once is a right of passage for any Nashvillian cinephile.
Find tickets and further details via the Belcourt.
