I don't quite know what to think about Robert Altman. He had quite a low batting average, producing many duds per relative hit, and produced many films that feel lethargic and self-indulging. I came up with a few things in his work that I could identify which bugged me. One of these is that his stories feel as if they are geared more appropriately towards literature than film. One challenge that film faces and literature does not is that a film needs to be pleasantly watchable in a single sitting. Nashville, in my opinion, is a bit unwieldy; not just because of length, but because of pacing. Novels can tell long, sprawling character stories like Nashville's nicely, but in a film, it becomes difficult even to pay attention when many unrelated scenes come end over end with little progression. The musical content is the only justification to present Nashville as a film; in no other area does it seem well matched to the medium. Even for such a character-centric film, there are few changes or transitions in any of the large number of major characters, removing the last possibility for a 'plot'. We get to know them, sure, but that's what the film ends up being: a lengthy, lengthy exposition. As we get to know these characters, it exposes a fuller image of the broader system of music and politics that the characters live in, but there's no conclusion the viewer is being guided to. This is where people may say that the film should be looked at and interpreted, but with the real-time aspect of viewing a film, this need for broader analysis plus the lack of progression within the film makes me say that the story is far better suited to literature.
I also am bugged by Altman's cinematography. He loves his slow zoom-in-zoom-out shots, and for lack of a more specific description seems very bland in his style. It feels like he is putting most of his effort into the content of the movie, acting as a simpler window to the more theatrical elements of what occurs and how it is portrayed by the actors. This can work, but I think Altman is shabby here too. Put bluntly, his films often aren't that interesting. I would label The Long Goodbye as an exception here, with Elliot Gould's strong performance and an original plot. In The Player, I found the acting by Tim Robbins to be little short of painful. He seems incapable of expressing emotion or mood, as if he were perpetually bored by everything occurring to him. While his character certainly wasn't sympathetic, I still can't imagine him feeling as flat as Robbins' portrayal. The Player had a strong B-movie vibe, particularly in the scene with the argument and the death of the writer. In a film which seemed bent on portraying harsh realities about Hollywood, it felt off to have a man drown after 10 seconds underwater, or for someone to try such an over-the-top movie gag as a fax message in the protagonist's car pointing down to a box with a snake in it. With the Hollywood self-references, like the mention of Touch of Evil during the lengthy opening shot, and the sell-out ending to 'Habeas Corpus' with Bruce Willis, the film had hints of a bitter comedy. They were too little, in my opinion, against the personality-less seriousness pervasive in the rest of the film.
