Nashville - Heather Hendershot (BFI Film Classics)

'Nashville' by Heather Hendershot (BFI Film Classics 104-page paperback)

Robert Altman's 1975 film 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.

Heather Handershot places Nashville in the context of the New Hollywood of the 1970s, which offered a post-censorship anti-hero, the perennial loser. Through a close reading of the five days over which the film takes place, she unpacks both its political dynamics and the characters' interrelationships and motivations.