Kudos to the BFI for the restoration/re-release of Altman's dazzling, innovative classic from 1975. The film pieces together two dozen key characters, multiple emotional strands and several major themes (celebrity, sex, politics) into an astonishing mosaic of American life, its myths and desires.
Nashville's colourful music scene is the milieu in which stars, wannabes, the media, political campaigners and a silent loner cross paths, get laid, break down and experience personal dramas during the build-up to a political event.
This is the original that defines the deceptively loose narrative style - a tragicomic tapestry of sharply observed and profoundly human character vignettes - we have come to call 'Altmanesque'.
