in a mid western town a long serving live musical and comedy radio show is being disbanded by a texan corporation. as the shadow of death looms over the show- the end of an era - characters perform folk and country songs about what folk and country songs are about – the land, love, god, loneliness and death. as much as it is about the defeat of the ‘small’ in the face of globalization, the film is also about an old man coming to terms with his own mortality and wryly looking back at his life as an artist and the legacy that he would leave. characters contemplate the life that they have led and the memories that they are left with of people and places loved and lost in the matter of fact spirituality tinged with humor that forms the backbone of the film.
the music finds its own way of saying goodbye, by killing its feel good family values with bawdy humour. it’s as if a resignation to inevitable obsolescence is accepted by trying unsuccessfully to kill the ideals that it represented. like committing suicide before you are killed to make sure that your death is in your control.
and to take life away an angel of death walks behind the scenes offering solace to the grieving. but there is also the grim reaper in the form of the texan ‘axeman’ cynically watching what he can never become or have. even when he is gone though, the ending cannot be delayed. if the time has come for something to end, it must.
i wonder whether altman knew that this was to be his last film before he died at the age of 81. what a great way to go..
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