NASHVILLE (1975). I tried watching it in my twenties and kept falling asleep. I watched it in my thirties and shrugged. I just watched it again in my forties and absolutely loved it. 
Country music, soul-of-America thematics, a cast full of character actors, cockeyed 1970s filmmaking. I mean, all it's missing is like Clint Eastwood and maybe some samurai and it'd have all my favorite cinematic ingredients.
Watching the Criterion blu ray projected on my bedroom wall helped a lot. Previous viewings on VHS & DVD made me think it was kind of a visually drab film. Obviously not the case. It's not one-perfect-shot flashy, but it's full of richly textured frames with tons of variety.
The camera isn't the star of the show. Instead, it's the cast and the locations and the overall aural thickness. Most of NASHVILLE feels like a *found* tapestry -- more so than say SHORT CUTS or MAGNOLIA, where the auteur's intentions keep creeping into the film.
I think the main thing I find myself wrestling with, overall, is the assassination stuff -- the one place where I feel Altman straining for significance. Or, more exactly, I struggle w/ the build-up to the assassination. Because the immediate fallout is pretty genius.
I could never make a film like this. Not that I could never write an ensemble script -- I have before & will again -- but I don't know if I could find the balance between dramatic digression and steady plot convergence that writer Joan Tewkesbury & Altman pull off.
The story keeps skating right on the edge of inertia. But then as it seems to settle into stasis, some new connection is revealed, or a key revelation arises -- not as scripted plot, but as the sort of inevitable consequence of the characters' being. It's stunning stuff.
But on a basic pure pleasure level, I mostly love it because it's such a paradise of great characters. I find Henry Gibson's Haven Hamilton to be as fascinating as any founding father. And Lily Tomlin's Linnea Reese to be worthy of a great Alice Munro story. Brilliant film.
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