Welcome for the last time to A Prairie Home Companion, brought to you from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, by Garrison Keillor, a crew of movie stars having a ball playing dress-up, director Robert Altman in an uncharacteristically genial mood and, of course, Powdermilk Biscuits. This is the last live broadcast--well, not live; we're watching a movie--of a show that's been on the radio "since Jesus was in third grade," a turn of phrase that doesn't sound so cynical when you consider that most of the songs being performed tonight are old gospel numbers of the "meet on that beautiful shore" variety. The show can't linger here on the near shore because a Texas conglomerate recently bought station WLT and will be knocking down the Fitzgerald Theater as soon as its walking, yodeling relics of Americana have shuffled offstage. You might think this act of wanton cultural desecration would be halted by an angel of God--one of them happens to be drifting around in a white raincoat, positioning herself so that light bulbs shine behind her golden hair--but she's been sent on a different mission, and besides, she seems to retain just the ghost of a grudge against Garrison Keillor.
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Survivors
Stuart Klawans: Lee Daniels's Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire, Oren Moverman's The Messenger, Alexander Sokurov's The Sun
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Baffled Dignity
Stuart Klawans: Alain Resnais's Wild Grass and Margot Benacerraf's Araya.
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Emotional Rescue
Stuart Klawans: Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, Claire Denis's 35 Shots of Rum, Jane Campion's Bright Star
A Prairie Home Companion is surely the bounciest, cheeriest musical I've ever seen on the subject of death and failure. It's brightened by cinematographer Ed Lachman (who lights everything and everyone as if for the stage), by dozens of mildly off-color jokes (recited in an unbroken string by cowboy singers Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly) and of course by Altman, whose unflagging energy and delight in actorly collisions make A Prairie Home Companion into a sort of one-set, real-time Nashville.
That would be Nashville without the scope and ambition. On the plus side, though, this movie has Lindsay Lohan.
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