Nashville: Bridging to Reality
Life is not linear. In the daily accumulation of experience that collectively comprises one’s life, a mass of intricately interconnected events from myriads of varying background circumstances combine to form a single whole of existence. In the midst of this existence, one can undertake the arduous task of observing and comprehending the infinite web of connectivity linking the events of the surrounding world, but to truly do so is both impossible and impractical. To understand the how’s and why’s of one’s subliminally phantasmagoric environment is unnecessary for the mere purpose of successfully functioning within the environment. Understanding this impossibly complicated structure beneath the surface of life is not as important as merely knowing the subsurface layer exists. Being able to see the complexity of life, in how each and every event has some connection in time and spatial orientation with every other event, allows one to admire how any minute personal involvement in the much larger scheme of life is able to profoundly effect the overall scheme, as interaction even on only a limited and local level results in a rippling effecting a much larger whole of life. All this theorizing being done, life is plainly not linear. Robert Altman would agree, as one can infer upon viewing many of his films, including “Nashville,” in which Altman provides a more realistic portrayal of the complexities of life by using an unusually contorted plot-sequence.
A traditional Hollywood film is generally centered around a single character or small group of characters, closely following this person or group exploits in a fairly linear and sometimes unfortunately predictable sequence of events, presumably heading toward some sort of resolution at the end of the film. “Nashville” is not a typical Hollywood film, in that it does not convey life in such simplistic terms. Altman’s vision of reality tends to recede from the typical Hollywood close-up upon one individual set of circumstances. Instead, Altman affords the viewer a more distant world-view, in order to more accurately express the role of any one person in the sprawling expanse of life. Altman’s mode of expression in this case takes the form of the twenty-four main characters, who all, during the course of the film, alternate between playing roles mostly separate from each other, interspersed with a few scenes in which most of the characters interact together The significance of the scenes in which the characters are mostly together is to emphasis the effects of each individuals’ actions in life; the countless personal decisions each character makes ultimately contribute to his or her appearance in the scenes in which the characters appear together. Altman leaves it to the viewer to decipher the method in all the seemingly incoherent madness on screen. The very fact that Altman weaves a story full of apparent randomness instead of the typical linear Hollywood plot reinforces his efforts to produce a film about the complex reality of life. The way each character interacts with the others in arriving at their final destination at the political rally serves as a microcosm for how every person in life interacts with everyone else in influencing individual outcomes and circumstance. In a paradoxical way, by creating disorder on screen, Altman enables the viewer to gain a better perspective of the world’s complexity.
To anyone disinterested in gaining a different perspective on life, a Robert Altman film would likely further disinterest such a person. Altman’s films require a certain degree of thought and inference to make the connections with reality upon which new ideas and perspectives of reality can be based. However, once such a link can be formed, bridging the fictional world of madness in a film like “Nashville” with the reality inherent in life, further exploration and theorizing about the many levels of life can begin and persist. With a greater perspective of world, removed from individualistic concerns of self, and on a much greater scale of personal involvement, the mind can formulate countless theories about how life could profoundly change for every individual, if each does truly work in an intricate web with every other individual as one might postulate upon sufficient thought. Whether such an unlikely scenario could ever occur is impossible to know, but if every person realized their true role within the context of life, of humanity, and acted accordingly within their individual role, the complexity of life could become not only observable, but also comprehensible.