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A Prairie Home Companion

Review By: Stephen Snart
StephenSnart@TheCinemaSource.com

I think back fondly on a weekend last summer in which I immersed myself in Robert Altman classics. I studied up on some of his seminal 1970s work by renting Mash, The Long Goodbye and California Split. If my adoration for the director had ever been called into question before that weekend, it was firmly cemented by that Sunday night. I was captivated by his ability to capture honest and natural performances and tell meaningful stories, all the while blending comedy and drama with ease.

One of the directorial traits I admire the most is career longevity. Like two of my favorite active directors, Woody Allen and Brian De Palma, Altman has been working consistently for the past four decades. When a director amasses a body of work that substantial, his or her films take on an interconnectivity, revealing common themes and stylistic motifs that make each new entry an appendage to their long-lasting career. Like Allen, Altman manages to accomplish the remarkable feat of approximately averaging a film every year. I meet each one with equal parts excitement and anxiety, nervous it won’t live up to their standard. While A Prairie Home Companion does not quite replicate the glory of some of his 70s classics, it does offer everything you hope to see in an Altman picture: long takes, quirky characters, biting humor, overlapping dialogue, bustling backgrounds, slow zooms and the occasional bout of pathos.

Here, Altman directs a script penned by NPR superstar, Garrison Keillor, who also stars in the film… as himself. His story is a fictional account of the final broadcast of his real life radio program, A Prairie Home Companion. The variety show is filmed on a stage in front of a live audience but broadcast exclusively on radio. With the release of the film, many of his diehard fans (those who haven’t seen his live broadcasts) will get their first glimpse at the man whose soothing voice they’ve been listening to for the past thirty years. Keillor may have a face for radio but his enthusiasm is worthy of the silver screen.

In the film and in reality, Keillor moderates the program, singing songs, telling stories, spieling facetious advertisements and introducing guest musicians like the rustic cowhands Dusty and Lefty (Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly) or the chummy Johnson Sisters (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin). The heartfelt performers go on stage with stoic oblivion, standing on the brink of their last show, with The Axeman (Tommy Lee Jones) scheduled to deliver the official word by the night’s end. The performers make barely a mention about the impending cancellation because as the narrator (Kevin Kline as security guard Guy Noir) informs us, the Midwestern ideology is “if you ignore bad news it will go away.” The proceedings are imbued with an unexpected, ethereal quality through the arrival of an angel played by Virginia Madsen, who ...