A Haunting Last Act

“A Prairie Home Companion” is a great companion piece to “Cars.” It may sound odd to compare master filmmaker Robert Altman’s latest masterpiece to a Disney/ Pixar animated film about talking cars, but hear me out.

These are both films about characters whom the modern world has passed by, who have become obsolete in the name of progress. Both films have a deep sense of loss at their core, a nostalgia for an America that no longer exists and may never have existed. Just as the town of Radiator Springs in “Cars” has been forgotten since a new road was built so that travelers could get wherever they are going faster, the title radio program of Altman’s film is being shut down by “the axeman,” even as it has miraculously existed far past it’s prime. These are both stories that, at their core, are about old men coming to terms with the fact that they have become obsolete- coming to terms with death. Okay, so maybe the animated car movie isn’t really about coming to terms with death, but it does have an old-timer played by Hollywood icon Paul Newman, who is as old as Hollywood icon Robert Altman. I bet Newman’s character, Doc, has the car afterlife on his mind more often than not.

Maybe you think the comparisons are a stretch, and maybe you’re right. But both these films resonated in a strange, similar way this past weekend, and felt somehow of a piece.

But enough about the talking cars- they’ve gotten enough media attention already. “A Prairie Home Companion” is a lovely film based on Garrison Keillor’s long running radio program of the same name. The real radio show airs on NPR, and despite being as anachronistic and from another era as it is in the film, it is no danger of being cancelled in reality. In fact, because there is nothing like it on the radio anymore is why it has large cult following on NPR- that is the show’s appeal. But the radio program of the film exists in a world without NPR and without NPR audiences- in the film, the show is only broadcast on a local station, which has been sold to a bigger corporation who sees no point in keeping it on the air. If that wasn’t postmodern enough, many of the radio show’s popular characters who are featured in stories told on the show are characters in the movie- who work for the show. It sounds confusing, but it all works very simply and beautifully in the film.

Keillor plays himself, or a version of himself, leading a large and brilliant cast as they perform the last broadcast of the show. Keillor is just as warm a screen presence as he is a radio personality; for him (and the film version of himself, and even though he is not strictly playing himself, what’s the difference?) all of life is a performance. When he is not in front of the microphone, narrating the show and singing, he is backstage telling rambling stories about how he got into radio. Highlights from the large ensemble cast (an Altman trademark) include Kevin Kline, hilarious as Guy Noir, a former PI who works for the show and speaks in film noir-isms (yes, he is one of the show’s characters come to life in the movie,) while Meryl Streep and Lilly Tomlin are wonderful as family singing duo (“we’re just like the Carter family- only they were famous.”) The musical performances are rambunctious and fun, and left me smiling broadly throughout most of the film. But there is a deep undercurrent of sadness running through “A Prairie Home Companion” as well, because the movie is about an end of an era, and everyone knows it- even if they don’t want to admit it. When some of the performers fuss about how this is their last show, Keillor tells them “every show is my last show; that’s my philosophy.” And it’s not just the show that’s ending- Virginia Madsen (lovely, and in the middle of a nice career boost along with the entire cast of “Sideways,”) plays an angel who watches the last broadcast while coming to the theatre to help an old performer on his final journey after his final performance. She tells an old woman, the man’s lover, that “an old man’s death is not a tragedy.” This is a film that is about seeing the end and accepting the inevitable. Robert Altman is 81 years old and recently went through major heart surgery. At the Academy Awards, he promised that the new heart meant he had another fifty years of films in him. I hope that he’s telling the truth, but the film is clearly not just about Keillor’s show- it’s about Altman’s show too, about his life and career in show business. Robert Altman knows the final curtain will fall for him in a time not too far in the future. With this film, he looks death straight in the face and coming to terms with it in his own way.

And he faces it with joy and without fear. Altman would probably be happy to die on a film set, just as the old performer died after singing his last song. “A Prairie Home Companion” is a film about looking towards death and knowing it will simply be another great, rambling story to tell.