|
A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION Send This Review to a Friend
It is worth seeing “A Prairie Home Companion” just for the fun of hearing Meryl Streep and Lili Tomlin sing duets. Throw in Kevin Kline as a down-on-his-luck security guard as an added reason. As a matter of fact the reasons keep piling up, as we also get the dry wit and demeanor of the show’s host Garrison Keillor, the hilarious cowpoke singing duo of Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly, a fresh, appealing look at Lindsay Lohan and the haunting presence of Virginia Madsen as a beautiful, wandering angel of death. Most of all, there is the genius of director Robert Altman, who still is at the top of his game in making unusual films that captivate and get under one’s skin. Immensely entertaining in the laid-back, leisurely Keillor-Altman way, “A Prairie Home Companion” is one of the best films released thus far in 2006.
The screenplay, written by Keillor, involves what is supposed to be the last broadcast of the show in the Minnesota theater that has been its home for all these years. It’s pure fiction; the real show remains on the air. The story is told within the confines of one nostalgic performance, with an inside view of much happening on this particular night. The tale has a touch of film noir. In fact, Kline as the security man is named Guy Noir, and he begins a narration in clipped, hardboiled detective tones as we get a view of a diner from which he emerges.
The nemesis is Tommy Lee Jones as the unsympathetic honcho known as Axeman, who symbolizes the corporate purchase of the theater scheduled to undergo destruction and views the show as a relic overdue for extinction. This casts a pall over the final broadcast. So does the Dangerous Woman, played by Madsen, who wears a white trench coat and has come with a mission. Guy Noir recognizes what’s up and manages to encourage her in an added direction.
Meanwhile, we are being royally entertained by The Guys All-Star Shoe Band, the Johnson sisters, Yolanda and Rhoda (Streep and Tomlin), carrying out the family performing tradition, with Lohan as Yolanda’s daughter, who rises to the occasion to show that she has the talent that can carry on in another Johnson generation. Harrelson and Reilly are hilarious, especially when they sing “Bad Jokes,” a compendium off-color material that could make censors apoplectic. Tom Keith, playing himself, also is a picture-stealer in a turn as the sound effects man trying to keep up with patter by running a gamut of creative accompaniment.
The film itself is a nostalgic ode to old-time radio as well as a salute to Keillor’s long-running “Prairie Home Companion” show. Others fleshing out the story and the broadcast include Maya Rudolph, MaryLouise Burke, L. Q. Jones, Sue Scott and Tim Russell, with Jearlyn Steele, Robin and Linda Williams, and Prudence Johnson playing themselves. Special praise is in order for director of photography Ed Lachman, who endows the film with visual clarity and beauty, including the dazzling close-ups of Streep and Tomlin.
Altman’s manner of filming and editing, by weaving the various threads together (as he did in Nashville), keeps everything moving compellingly, with music playing a major part in carrying forward the homespun atmosphere, and the performers providing the personality and the needed sense of reality. Some of the events evoke sadness and impending mortality, but the entertainment itself is a lovely compendium of the sort of Americana captured by the show itself and the phenomenon of its endurance, as well as by the longevity of mid-westerner Altman as one of America’s foremost and most creative directors. A Picturehouse release.
|