[Altman attempts in] his Nashville to evoke on screen what he perceives to be the dominant quality of American life today. It is one man's tragicomically exaggerated vision of contemporary American society, and by implication western civilization as a whole, that is the real subject of this film, the timeless universal to be conveyed through the particular vehicle of spatially defined Nashville. Altman's method in building and equipping such a vehicle is to be compared with that of character or the writer of comedy. Unlike the dramatic novelist or the tragedian, he is never at one with any of his characters, never at pains to pursue each's fate as he or she comes into being. Their dialogue is anything but profound, they themselves nothing if not ordinary. We do not identify with them as they move linearly from a beginning to an end in time and come to...