Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
The intersecting stories of twenty-four characters—from country star to wannabe to reporter to waitress—connect to the music business in Nashville, Tennessee.
Altman's sprawling mosaic of 24 characters weaving through Nashville's country music world is one of American cinema's most singular achievements. The ensemble acting is extraordinary — Elliott Gould, Lily Tomlin, Ronee Blakley, Keith Carradine and the rest deliver naturalistic, overlapping performances that feel genuinely lived-in. Novelty is sky-high: no other film captures American populism, celebrity worship, and political machinery through this particular kaleidoscopic lens with such distinctive improvisational energy. The ending — the assassination and Barbara Jean's replacement by Albuquerque singing 'It Don't Worry Me' — is a hauntingly ambiguous statement on American resilience and denial that resonates decades later. Plot in the traditional sense is deliberately loose and episodic, which is intentional but still a relative weak point versus the other categories.