The Spirit of Radio
One of the first striking things about Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion is the really snazzy new Picturehouse animated logo. The presentation of the whole movie is exceptional overall.
At the North American premiere last night at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, TX, John C. Reilly introduced the film to a packed-in house. He was greeted with thuderous applause and could not have been in better company.
We open in Mickey's Dining Car, with voice-over narration by Kevin Kline's Guy Noir. As a longtime listener to the radio show, I was impressed how undistracting it was having another voice saying the lines usually spoken by Keillor himself.
The film is conscious of the fact that radio variety programs have been out of style for decades, as the radio show always has, but that's not all of the point here. Altman's film is about the undying spirit of bygone eras, reminding us the passion and humor that is not so out-of-touch as some may lead you to believe.
The narrative is part radio show, part real, and the structure is unconventional to say the least. All the aforementioned are good things though, rest assured. The overlapping, Mamet-esque rambling from various characters and the radio setting immediately brought to mind a Mamet play called The Water Engine. The play begins as a radio drama and shifts back and forth from the studio to a conventional stage play in much the same way characters like Guy Noir and the Dangerous Woman (Virginia Madsen, smoking-hot dame as ever) interweave into the lives of these "real" people performing in a fictionalized version of APHC.
Highlights include the radiant singing voice of Meryl Streep, the sharp, acerbic one-liners, and the recalling of the golden age of radio throughout the script. One of the screenwriters was in attendance, and I wish I could have shook his hand or bought him a beer or six. Few films talk about mortality as much as Prairie Home does and end up reaffirming your desire to get up the next day and change the world somehow rather than consider giving up.
John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson bounce off one another so well it's remarkable no one has used them together previously. Their song about bad jokes absolutely killed. There were moments of suspension and then uproarious laughter related to Duct Tape, Descartes, and Texans who "talk funny and whose eyes don't focus".
Back to Ms. Streep though, I have to say she lights up the whole room, she's so "on" and "in", and she continues to surprise me every time. There isn't a moment I remotely doubt any of her motivation or think she's over the top. Lily Tomlin and she are just as well-matched as Harrelson and Reilly. Their interplay and overlap will be the subject of many-a rewatching, since there's no way to catch it all through the laughter.
Maya Rudolph plays the Stage Manager from Noises Off!-type part well, the sensible link in a chain of chaos, and Tommy Lee Jones provides a wonderfully contrasting role compared to that of his recent turn as Pete in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Even Lindsay Lohan shows some decent chops as Streep's dismissive, withdrawn poet daughter, Lola.
So much of the film is symbolic and semiotic in its delivery, and it hits the right notes the whole way through. Last year, a major surge in movies about or wherein music is transformative and positively empowering became apparent. This show crackles with electric bits of wit and passion throughout.
I'll put together more fleshed-out coverage of this and other SXSW films after the fest is over. Below you will find linked a cobbled-together video file of Matt Dentler (Festival Producer Supreme) bringing in John C. Reilly to introduce to the film along with screenwriter Ken LaZebnik: