January 11, 2007
Americans have been getting a bad press for some time now. A Prairie Home Companion will remind you why some of them are worth having.
Garrison Keillor's radio show - old style country-and-western vaudeville mixed with ridiculous live musical adverts - is about to be axed. We open backstage at the beginning of the last broadcast, as the people who have put their lives into the 30 years of the show suddenly begin to realise that this is the end. The film makes no bones about whose side it's on. "Soon all there will be on the radio is people yellin' and computers playin' music". The stonkingly good upbeat country-rock style songs (a constant soundtrack as the film unfolds in real time) reminds you why, when the last vaudeville show really goes off the air, we will have lost something really important: the pinnacle of American folk culture.
Then an angel turns up. Of Death. What's surprising is that this doesn't cause a descent into farce or uneasy black comedy. Nothing, not even plot, and certainly not convention, is allowed to interfere with the show. This is a successful feelgood movie without cliché. It has all the elements of standard American drama - pregnancy, a private detective, mother-daughter tension, ageing stars, live audience, evil corporations, simmering unrequited exes, backstage fornication, angel of death - but once the elements have served their immediate purpose of coming alive to entertain us, they're allowed to meander off inconclusively. Rather people you know in real life. Making this kind of story not only interesting but satisfactory is the particular genius of Garrison Keillor (as any Lake Wobegon fan knows). It’s like gossip. You've got to know what happens next. And it’s always something unexpected, typical, and ambiguous.
There are some hilarious set pieces – for example where the sound effects man (Tom Keith) has to keep up with the storytellers deliberately throwing him more and more complicated challenges ("So then the orangutan hurls the peacock through a plate glass window..."). But it’s the superb acting (well, and the music) that really makes the film work. Virginia Madsen as the ambiguous angel is surreal and convincing. If you're used to being responsible for people you will find Maya Rudolph’s competent but subservient stage manager, driven to faking labour to get her star's attention as he yarns with friends backstage, particularly sympathetic. Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are hilarious as gently anarchic cowboy singers. Kevin Kline as the clumsy private eye narrator is acrobatically slapstick without being embarrassing. Garrison Keillor extends his radio persona to film impeccably (you'd never think that this tall ponderous slow man had all these crazy characters in his head). But Meryl Streep rocks. Literally, figuratively, professionally. Having just seen her clipped and polished in The Devil Wears Prada, watching her as the vague scatty singer grabbing her beloved ex (Garrison Keillor) for a dance is a revelation.
Chaotic, bittersweet, inconclusive, laid back and surreal and very funny: rather like life. But better. Worth taking a couple of hours out of your own to see.
Garrison Keillor's radio show - old style country-and-western vaudeville mixed with ridiculous live musical adverts - is about to be axed. We open backstage at the beginning of the last broadcast, as the people who have put their lives into the 30 years of the show suddenly begin to realise that this is the end. The film makes no bones about whose side it's on. "Soon all there will be on the radio is people yellin' and computers playin' music". The stonkingly good upbeat country-rock style songs (a constant soundtrack as the film unfolds in real time) reminds you why, when the last vaudeville show really goes off the air, we will have lost something really important: the pinnacle of American folk culture.
Then an angel turns up. Of Death. What's surprising is that this doesn't cause a descent into farce or uneasy black comedy. Nothing, not even plot, and certainly not convention, is allowed to interfere with the show. This is a successful feelgood movie without cliché. It has all the elements of standard American drama - pregnancy, a private detective, mother-daughter tension, ageing stars, live audience, evil corporations, simmering unrequited exes, backstage fornication, angel of death - but once the elements have served their immediate purpose of coming alive to entertain us, they're allowed to meander off inconclusively. Rather people you know in real life. Making this kind of story not only interesting but satisfactory is the particular genius of Garrison Keillor (as any Lake Wobegon fan knows). It’s like gossip. You've got to know what happens next. And it’s always something unexpected, typical, and ambiguous.
There are some hilarious set pieces – for example where the sound effects man (Tom Keith) has to keep up with the storytellers deliberately throwing him more and more complicated challenges ("So then the orangutan hurls the peacock through a plate glass window..."). But it’s the superb acting (well, and the music) that really makes the film work. Virginia Madsen as the ambiguous angel is surreal and convincing. If you're used to being responsible for people you will find Maya Rudolph’s competent but subservient stage manager, driven to faking labour to get her star's attention as he yarns with friends backstage, particularly sympathetic. Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly are hilarious as gently anarchic cowboy singers. Kevin Kline as the clumsy private eye narrator is acrobatically slapstick without being embarrassing. Garrison Keillor extends his radio persona to film impeccably (you'd never think that this tall ponderous slow man had all these crazy characters in his head). But Meryl Streep rocks. Literally, figuratively, professionally. Having just seen her clipped and polished in The Devil Wears Prada, watching her as the vague scatty singer grabbing her beloved ex (Garrison Keillor) for a dance is a revelation.
Chaotic, bittersweet, inconclusive, laid back and surreal and very funny: rather like life. But better. Worth taking a couple of hours out of your own to see.