Altman and Naivety

A topic important to all of Altman's films we watched in class is naivety. In Nashville Sueleen Gay and Linnea Reese are very naive. Sueleen thinks she is going to be the next huge country singer, along with many other characters. In reality, she's awful. Most of the other characters going for the same goal as Sueleen are just as awful. What's a downfall for Sueleen is that she's willing to give up some of her innocence in order to "achieve" her goal. What's more is that people make her believe she's going to become a singer someday. She's not. Not even close. In the end she realizes it's not going to happen, and is left in the dust. Thus, a major theme of Nashville has to deal with checking oneself with reality from time to time in order to stay loyal to oneself and not get caught off-guard when things don't go as planned. Also, in The Player the main character Griffin Mill gets so caught up in the mystery of the "I will kill you" postcards and notices that he fails to see the long-term effects of his actions. He stalks the guy who is supposedly sending him the messages and murders him on a whim. He then proceeds to make love to this guy's old girlfriend and lose his name in Hollywood, including breaking his current girlfriend's heart. It's not a good situation, and all a result of being too concerned with a silly message (which perhaps also got out of hand) and ultimately being too naive to see the outcome of his actions. Then again, this part of the story was in a movie, so I'm not exactly sure if it happened and if we're supposed to learn from it... Oh well. Good movies.