Nashville

Robert Altman's Nashville (1975) is simultaneously an intimate film about interpersonal connection and disconnection, and a sprawling, meandering portrait of American societal exhaustion in the wake of Vietnam, Watergate and a spate of political assassinations. Despite its pessimistic, satirical viewpoint, the film suggests a carefully guarded optimism: 'life may be a one—way street', but one has no choice but to 'keep a' goin'.

Heather Hendershot places Nashville in the context of the New H...