The songs
In my old age, I am catching up with movies that somehow slipped past me previously. Bought the DVD and watched this for the first time last night. I cannot say that I was bowled over by its brilliance as I have been for certain recent watches and re-watches. But I do realize that I had just seen something weighty and innovative, and I expect to re-watch it every year for as long as I am spared. It may be that I will derive more from each successive viewing.
But there is one stumbling block to my unalloyed appreciation: the songs. As they occupy around a third of the running time, this is no small impediment.
I am not a fan of C & W music. In my country it is known as "music for people who do not like music". But I enjoyed it in, for example, "Winter's Bone", "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" and "Crazy Heart" and it enhanced these good movies.
But when Haven Hamilton sang his first songs I assumed that we were intended to laugh at them. Same for those from Barbara Jean, Connie White and Tommy Brown. I liked the gospel singing, but that was standard fare, and the two songs near the end, sung by Tom Frank in the club and by Albuquerque in the finale, were good enough not to impair these two great scenes. (Curiously, these were both written by Keith Carradine and I had no idea he had musical talents as well).
Now I read reviewers here praising some of the other songs which I had assumed to be crude lampoons. I accept that the movie is not really "about" the music business. You can imagine Altman could make much the same film, making much the same points, in a different context, business or sport for example. (In a sense he did, with "The Player"). But the music takes up so much of the film that I would like to know what Altman expects me to think of it.
To take an important example. I read here that we are supposed to sympathize with Barbara Jean and feel protective towards her. Throughout the movie I took her for a washed-out hysterical phony, a creation of hype and hypocrisy, who needed her husband to keep her from going off the rails completely. I thought her "breakdown" scene with its pitiful ham-acting and that vomit-inducing trash about "My Idaho Home" was supposed to exemplify that. But had her music displayed talent, that would have altered my whole reading of her character. In "Crazy Heart", Bad Blake would have been only a despicable drunk had he not had some ability as a singer, which made us root for him.
Another Altman film I first saw recently is "Kansas City" (1996). Here by contrast the music raises a no-more-than-competent film to a higher level. (And I am normally no more a fan of jazz than I am of C & W).