Movie Review: A Prairie Home Companion

Robert Altman bids a folksy farewell to filmmaking and later life with a mix of real-life radio show, bad jokes, sweet singing, film noir weirdness, and Mid-Western cookie characters. A Prairie Home Companion is a small-town, big-heart, radio variety show broadcast live from the [F. Scott] Fitzgerald Theater in St Paul, Minnesota (the hometown of the author of The Great Gatsby).

This part-fiction film celebrates its final broadcast on WLT ("with lettuce and tomato") radio, so called because it apparently started out in the back of a sandwich shop. Believe this story if you will, but there are many other myths to come about the show's origin, perpetuated by the wily GK, the MC played by himself, Garrison Keillor, who wrote the screenplay.

What strikes you immediately about this swansong is its simple beauty. The opening shot of a rural landscape at dusk, gradually roaming towards the gloaming with the crackle of a radio in the background, searching to find that satisfying, homely station. A Prairie Home Companion is an American Home Truths (BBC Radio 4) set to music: a mix of charismatic presenting, oddball humor, and a welling of human spirit from both performers and audience.

Cut from the opening credits to an old-school American diner car. The narrating voice of Guy Noir (Kevin Kline), a Walter Neff-like wise owl private detective transported from the 1940s film noir era. What the hell is he doing in this film? He must have walked into the wrong Hollywood backlot. But no, he wanders through a modern-day theatre audience to the backstage area where the performers and crew are preparing for a live musical radio broadcast. Later he's joined by an angel/femme fatale (Virginia Madsen), whom Guy Noir describes, "She had a Mount Rushmore T-shirt on, and those guys never looked so good. Especially Jefferson and Lincoln. Kind of bloated but happy." Thus the weirdness.

Article Author: Christopher Whalen

Christopher Whalen is an English graduate student at Hertford College, Oxford University with an interest in James Joyce and palimpsests. He was born in Scotland but started school in Germany. Read his self-portrait to find out more.

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