A Prairie Home Companion
d. Robert Altman, 2006
I haven't really kept up with Altman's recent films. I worship the movies he made in the 70s and his comeback films from the early 90s, The Player and Short Cuts, but I haven't seen anything he made after that. That is, until this year's A Prairie Home Companion. Altman, who is now 81, still knows how to make a pretty good movie. The overlapping dialogue is there, the undercurrent of sadness is there, but there seems to be something missing from this film. I'm not really sure what it is, but it has something to do with the feel of his 70s movies. Of all the Altman films I have seen, none of them have a sentimental ending, but A Prairie does. It's that, along with several other missteps, that keep this film from standing alongside his better stuff. The film itself is very enjoyable, it follows the backstage antics of the last radio show of "A Prairie Home Companion." The audience gets several interesting performances by such diverse actors as Lily Tomlin (who starred in Altman's Nashville 31 years ago), Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson, John C. Riley, Lindsay Lohan, and "Prairie Home Companion" veteran Garrison Keillor (who also scripted the movie). Now about those missteps, the whole thing with Virginia Madsen being an angel was rather superflous (was Altman thinking of Claudia Cardinale in Fellini's 8 1/2), and the Kevin Kline charatcter, though sometimes very funny, did not need to be the string holding the movie together. Still, I recommend the film, but anyone interested in Altman needs to seek out his earlier stuff (the Museum of Fine Arts is screening California Split in late July). Is this film as good as Altman's previous musical-driven movie, Nashville? Of course not, but that would be like saying "Well, Match Point isn't nearly as good as Annie Hall." It isn't, but we should be grateful to have such great directors still amongst us. And if Robert Altman never makes another movie, A Prairie Home Companion will be a fitting swan song.
