A Prairie Home Companion

Having a friend who is a theater manager is a great convenience when there are films one truly wants to see. So, it was my pleasure to see a second major film in two days.

The movie of the day was the new Robert Altman film starring real-world radio host Garrison Keillor named after his American Public Media program "A Prairie Home Companion." Also starring were Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, and Kevin Kline.

The picture includes a great deal of music and is thus most fitting for this web log. The Johnson girls as portrayed by Streep and Tomlin are nearly worth the price of admission all by themselves. The emotions of pride and regret, of audacity, tenacity, and resignation are all present along with a complex intertwining of loyalty and slightly jaded fatalism between the sisters themselves.

Other familiar characters from the radio program make their appearance in one way or another, including Dusty and Lefty, the Lonesome Cowboys, Guy Noir, and the actors Tim Russell and Sue Scott who are surprisingly good in their character roles. Real-world performers Linda and Robin Williams are in fine form as they portray themselves.

All music is backed up by Rich Dworski and the members of the radio show band. Dworski also wrote and arranged much of the music.

The story is set in St. Paul, Minnesota, on the last night of a long-running live radio broadcast. The show is broadcast weekly in a historic theater. The building's owner has sold out to a Texas corporation which will soon demolish the landmark and create a parking lot.

There are morals here, lessons learned in one's dim dark past and played out in a present where cell phones and computers are more seen than heard. The soundtrack here is one of bluegrass music, mountain music, and gospel music, not the whir of electronic printers. Headsets get a send-up in one comic scene.

For those of a certain generation the film is a nostalgic bath, a bath filled with warmish water into which has been added bath beads of unidentifiable aroma, not unpleasant, but faintly annoying in their slightly stale anonymity.

For younger viewers there is music, energy, and finally -- a cell phone.

For viewers of all ages there is a sense of what life lived long and hard is like for performers on the road. There is also the message that these good-hearted troopers would do it all again in a heart-beat.

See this film if you can. It will do your heart some good.

(c) 2006 by The Musical Patriot