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A Prairie Home Companion
Instead, he made it fun. The “story” of A Prairie Home Companion is little more than a rack on which the film hangs its large and comfortable coat—the radio show is being cancelled after one final broadcast. The rest of the film is a big, open canvas for a group of highly talented artists to work on. The enthusiasm and joy of the actors is unmistakable, and more than a little contagious. Nearly everyone, from the venerable L.Q. Jones as country-folk singer Chuck Akers to Maya Rudolph as the harried & Everyone involved is having a ball, including the director. This is unmistakably an Altman film, with all of the stylistic tics and signature moves that have come to be associated with him over the years. And yet, in some ways, it’s as much Keillor’s. The show has always been known for its bone dry wit, and much of the humor here is dry to the point of cracking (many lines work precisely because of this…anything broader would have sent the film careening over into complete farce). The synergy between the two men is palpable, and the resulting film is somehow more than the sum of its parts. The very same things I found cloying on the radio didn’t bother me on the screen, and the smugness seemed, while not entirely absent, more muted. Even more, the film beautifully illustrated a fundamental concept of nostalgia…that there’s almost always a thread of melancholy running through it (one dialogue in particular, between Keillor and Madsen, has stuck with me long since the credits rolled). Despite my extremely low tolerance for all things “folksy,” I found myself enjoying A Prairie Home Companion more than I would ever have imagined possible.
©2006 Ed Owens |
I should let you know up front that I went into Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion more than a bit reluctantly. It doesn’t help that I’m not a big fan of the show itself, but as one of the millions of people whose attention is currently turned to scattered stadiums around Germany, the thought of sitting through two hours of Garrison Keillor’s cloyingly wistful radio show writ large enough to fill an enormous theater screen was enough to give me hives. There’s a certain smugness to the show that has always put me off of it, but as a fan of Altman’s ensemble work, I thought that he might at least make it tolerable.
pregnant stage manager, is in top form, with the clear standouts being Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly as radio characters Dusty and Lefty brought to life (the conceit also includes the hilarious Kevin Kline as Guy Noir)—watch closely for the literal gleam in Harrelson’s eye during a late musical number that had the audience I saw it with in tears.
While I can’t honestly say I liked everything about it (Lohan and Streep both seemed occasionally lost, while the film’s free-form style made for an ill-fitting match with the more narrative-driven presence of Virgina Madsen’s character), I certainly liked it a lot. A Prairie Home Companion is what it is—a light, playful confection with only a hint of substance beneath it. It has a good time and invites you to come along, knowing that some won’t but making no apologies. For that, more importantly, I respected it.