What is the universal and never ending reality life has taught us to fear?
Change.
That’s why a spirited, feel-good and tender film that challenges us emotionally leaves a sad taste. It dares to strike a nerve most of us don’t want to acknowledge let alone feel. It can lead to morose imaginings and depression. It raises too much pain.
Through the backstage and onstage lives of a talented troupe which puts on a weekly radio show, we confirm inevitability.
‘The Prairie Home Companion’s screenplay by Garrison Keillor, blazes with life and tenderness based on his thirty year old real life NPR radio broadcast of the same name.
It’s a legendary show in the US, but not so well-known in other territories, but at the same time, speaks to everyone.
Keillor is also the author of sixteen books.
The story’s set in the revered, unchanged Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul Minnesota, named after long ago native-son, F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s brimming with history, literary, musical and personal.
And the usually acid Robert Altman, has turned softie, and given us one of his richest films ever, at age 80.
Surely change is on his mind.
First of all, the music track is a barnburner (sample soundtrack here ), much as it was in ‘O, Brother, Where Art Thou?’- a jewel based on traditional rural music.
To set the scene, radio is dying across the country, and with it the storytellers, sound effects and production people, the sister acts, the brother acts, the gospel singers, the ingénues, security people and the producers. They are about to be ‘thrown on the trash heap’ to make way for progress.
The film opens as a rural noir tale, set in a Hopkins-like diner, with Kevin Kline a dapper, elegant detective called Guy Noir. But as soon as he leads us to the theatre, the tone changes, gone is the noir, welcome the warm hearth of PHC.
This is where the Dangerous Woman / Angel appears (Virginia Madsen in a classic white trench) flitting mysteriously through the theatre, visiting one character after another, seen by only a couple. Those who can see her have their destiny in place.
Backstage stories are told with beautiful rhythms based on three decades of telling, retelling and amplifying. The troupe members are a showbiz family and indeed there is a real family – Rhonda and Yolanda Johnson (Lily Tomlin and Meryl Streep) and Yolanda’s daughter Lola Johnson (Lindsay Lohan – whoa! what’s she doing here, singing old country standards and looking like she’s enjoying it?).
Music and stories are their métier and that’s how they deal with change.
Each member is dysfunctional in his own way but no one really cares. They all have their places in the human story. Pain, suffering and joys unite these artistic people who can lock these experiences away as grist for the creative mill.
A warm brown and gold palette conjures up nostalgia for things most of us never knew – a comfortable, Midwest country life in which people and family come first, and where profit and corporate bulling don’t exist.
Is it a fairy tale or is it real, did it ever exist?
The action takes place on a stage, the wings, a couple of dressing rooms and a lunchroom, intimate settings in which anything can be done or said. Someone can fall in love with life again or die from grief.
So, here it is closing night, the final performance of the funny, intelligent and entertaining ‘The Prairie Home Companion’ in its home.
Word starts to spread that it’s over, and quiet panic sets in. Except for Keillor, playing himself, who seems to take everything in graceful stride, with a sense of amusement and the prospect of a new story to tell.
That night, the “Axeman Cometh” in the form of Tommy Lee Jones, the developer who will tear the place down. Even after witnessing the wonderful, one of a kind show Keillor and friends put on, his hard heart won’t stay the wrecking ball.
As a symbol of greed and disregard, he is the most chilling character we’re likely to see in a feel-good movie.
Meryl Streep, the heart of the film, is irresistible.
Even surrounded by gifted players, Streep is what we’re watching; her expressive face and body language are at the core of the film. Her magnetic presence is irresistible. I dare you to watch her sing ‘Goodbye to My Mama’ and not get misty, remembering and reliving your own losses.
The film is magic but by no means does it have a conventionally happy ending. It’s a story about people and life’s changes.
Just be warned. Be like Keillor.
Accept it all with bemused grace.
Opens June 9th. MPAA rated PG 13 for risqué humor
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