The Last "Prairie" Show

Noel Vera

Robert Altman's "A Prairie Home Companion" (2006) is flat-out
wonderful, and he could do worse than end his career on this
particular grace note.

It's difficult to talk about it; David Ehrenstein pretty much sums
up what I have to say in his comments on "A_Film_By:"

http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/36989

But let me try add a little to what he says.

In effect, Ehrenstein believes the film is all about death. The
premise goes like this: it's the last show of Garrison Keillor's
long-running program (someone called The Axeman (Tommy Lee Jones) is
coming to close the place down); people are constantly talking about
people who they haven't seen for years, or have died; someone
actually dies (backstage, quietly, in the basement, while waiting to
have sex); and Virginia Madsen as The Angel of Death In the Form of
a Femme Fatale wanders about wearing a white trench coat through the
corridors of the old Fitzgerald Theater, where the show is performed.

Which ties in with Altman's unnerving fascination with death--at
this point of his life, what with a heart transplant, and Paul
Thomas Anderson waiting in the wings to take charge just in case,
Altman can't not have the subject on his mind. And his feelings I
think infuse the film with a sense of dread, of nostalgia, of
sadness.

And regret, of course--quite a few people in the film express regret
for things they haven't done, or could have done while they still
could--but the regret is encapsulated in the sense that all this,
all the emotions and conflicts and knotty relationships
crisscrossing onstage and backstage (Keillor had an affair with
Streep?!) is funny, wonderful, a thing of beauty. Altman, in effect,
has gone past the fives stages of dealing with death and with this
picture embraced Acceptance.

Can't talk about an Altman film and not talk about the ensemble
acting, which is, of course, terrific. Woody Harrelson and John C.
Reilly are charmingly offhand as a pair of off-color singing
cowboys; LQ Jones is quietly great as Chuck Akers, an old lion with
a few roars left in him (he has a short number and is seen mostly in
the wings, but his presence quietly and inevitably assumes center
stage--becomes the film's guiding spirit, so to speak); Marylouise
Burke is funny and moving as the show's Lunch Lady (the film's
themes are encapsulated in one brief, ultimately heartbreaking shot
focused on her face); Lindsay Lohan is (for once) nicely understated
and believable as a country singer's daughter who likes to write
songs about suicide; Lily Tomlin is excellent as the funnier half of
the Yolanda sisters (she turns a screw-up involving a duct tape ad
into a marvel of headlong improvisation). And Meryl Streep--ye Oscar-
winning actress who I've never liked in dramas, never felt attracted
to, never felt was anything more than a cold fish onscreen--Streep
is given the leading star role and for once she is gorgeous,
wrinkles and sagging skin and all. It's like she's bottled up the
warmth and radiance she's been denying her film characters through
the years, doled out sparingly here, there ("Postcards from the
Edge," "Bridges of Madison County"--that's about all I can think
of), just so that Altman can somehow persuade her to pour it all out
for this film. It's an awesome sight.

Stylistically, Altman pretty much takes a page from the kind of
confined theater setting he used in "Come to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy
Dean, Jimmy Dean," and runs with it--flowing long takes, subtle
changes in lighting, theatrical conceits (lights fading on and off,
people seen in and through mirrors, other people walking about
unseen by everyone else) that somehow seem of a piece with the mood
and texture of the film.

Of the changes--I've listened to the radio show, and while I like it
in its own context (my favorite being Tom Keith, the show's awesome
sound effects man, who gets to show off a little onscreen), I think
the film is triumphantly its own, freestanding self. Kevin Kline
takes over from Keillor in playing Guy Noir--a program regular--and
is altered considerably: instead of a sane if bemused private eye
adrift in a world of eccentrics, Kline's Noir is eccentrically
clumsy (and rather dim) himself. It's a debatable change, not
necessarily for the best, but ultimately not crucial to Altman's
concept of Keillor's film, I think; I'm just glad they managed to
work Noir in, and if he's not as sharp as he is on air, Kline's
expert pratfalls make him as funny in a different way.

More crucial is the toning down of the politics (decidedly liberal
in the radio program), except for what you can find in the film's
premise (heartless corporation cancels down-home radio show). I'd
say Altman and Keillor decided that any overt political satire would
date the film outright, and would distract the audience from its
themes of passing and loss, and I'd agree with that; this isn't the
proper time and place (that being the show's regular airing, I
imagine) to bash political conservatives.

It isn't so much what Altman and Keillor are saying (that death is
inevitable, and as close as that beautiful woman standing next to
you), as the way they say it, with a kind of heroic bemusement all
the more moving because it hints rather than pushes its pathos at
you. They don't seem want to do anything more than tickle your funny
bone, tease the odd tear from your eye, maybe pass the time with a
corny country song or two, yet you laugh (or guffaw), sniffle (or
weep outright), and find yourself nodding in time to the songs.
Keillor sums it all up when the youngest member of the cast (Lohan,
as Lola) demands of him to do a eulogy--to the show, to the dead man
in the basement, to anything. He replies: "I'm of an age when if I
started to do eulogies, I'd be doing nothing else."

"You don't want to be remembered?" Lola asks.

"I don't want them to be told to remember me."

The rest (I would say) is silence.

6/28/06