A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION

Director: Robert Altman (MASH, The Player, Gosford Park, about 10 other really good movies)
Starring: Ensemble incl. Garrison Keillor, Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Virginia Madsen, Woody Harrelson, Lindsey Lohan, John C. Reilley, more

A Prairie Home Companion is the first great movie of 2006. Hopefully the first, and not the only, that is. Director Robert Altman, fresh off of his lifetime Oscar in March, has churned out a superb eulogy for his career in tandem with Garrison Keillor of NPR fame. This film is pointedly about death and endings and how we little people can cope with them. The answer is with wit and a stiff upper lip, because there ain't nuthin' in this world, not even an act of god, that's going to prevent our ending. The show goes on, right up until it ends, and that's that. Let's go have some coffee.

This film tells the story of a Saturday night radio show in the Fitzgerald theater - a variety extraveganza that was out of date before it even started. Now it's been running for 30-odd years and the end is in sight. The theater owner has sold the building to a Texas businessman, who's going to put the dusty old show out of its misery and build a parking lot in its place. He feels he's doing a service to the world. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. Either way, it's what happens, and this story is about how they deal with the events, not how they prevent them. Yes, this story has much in common with the real Prairie Home Companion show.

The show lives in a fantastic world of radio entertainment where reality is tangential. Lucky and Dusty, and the Johnson sisters are vaudvillian acts, the likes of which haven't existed since the turn of the last century. Guy Noir (Keillor's comically hard-boiled private investigator on the real Companion) runs security in the theater. There's even an angel (Madsen) floating around the theater to collect souls for that other show we'll all be appearing in someday.

From beginning to end this film lives in a world of midwestern sensibilities and wisdom. There are no great battles, psychological or otherwise. There is quiet fortitude and determination and acceptance. Keillor (more or less playing himself in the film) may state at one point that he hates eulogies, but that is exactly what this film is. It's a eulogy for his show. It's a eulogy for Altman. It's a eulogy for simple pleasures that have faded from the landscape of our lives.

In a sentence: Lord, give me the courage to change what I can, and the grace to accept what I cannot. There you go. Sure it's easier for a successful man like Keillor to say than it is for those in difficult circumstances, but in the end we're all going to the same place. You might as well get used to the idea.

As for early award consideration I'll put Altman and Streep on my lists for 2006 Oscar nominations. Altman has created yet another wonderful film, and Streep was (again) simply fantastic as a simple, sweet entertainer in the Johnson family singers (described in the film as the Carter family, just not famous).

Standouts: Pretty much everything. I think this will live on as a great film for years to come.
Blowouts: Little to nothing. Like all Altman films, there is even much new to see on repeat viewings.

Grade: A+