Friday Night In with ‘A Prairie Home Companion’
Posted by kittson on 16 Feb 2007 at 11:06 am | Tagged as: Movies, Review, Friday Night In
One can’t help wondering why Garrison Keillor, whose weekly radio show A Prairie Home Companion is still going strong after 30 years, would write and star in a movie about this same show’s final night on the air.
Directed by the late Robert Altman, in his signature style, where characters talk naturally over each other, and the camera meanders through the scenes, A Prairie Home Companion is a fantasy version of a backstage look at Keillor’s famed radio show. Here the performers are actually the characters they depict. Garrison Keillor as himself is as unemotional and earnest as he sounds on the air. John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson are a treat as cowboys Dusty and Lefty, who sing bawdy songs and tell stories about nights out on the range. Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin exhibit their own years of experience as well as their characters’ as sister Christian singing duo Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson – Streep as the sweet and idealistic soprano and Tomlin as the jaded and edgy tenor. And yes, all four of them can really sing.
The most unsettling element of the film is Virginia Madsen as the woman in the white trench coat. She wanders around the theater, on and off the set as the show is going on, the performers seeming to simultaneously see her and not see her. She professes to Keillor, who seems curious but undisturbed by her presence, that she’s an angel here to provide comfort to the dying. Although one old singer does quietly pass on with “the angel” standing by, she seems to be there more to oversee the death of the show, and consequently a way of life in America. Why would Keillor kill his radio show on film? Because it’s already dead, and that is the key to its success. People are drawn by nostalgia for a simple innocence that no longer belongs in the complicated modern world. These characters are the past living in the present, the very definition of ghosts. Why not give in to the nostalgia and spend this Friday night in with A Prairie Home Companion.
A Prairie Home Companion is available on Movies On Demand.
