Nashville

To the extent that the goal of art, in cinema or otherwise, is the clear and inexplicable crystallization of even the smallest moment of humanity, to exactly that extent this movie is a crowning glory.  To be sure, there are other goals of art: to tell a story, to inspire reaction, to simply exist in its beauty, and Nashville meets each of these goals almost as well.  But I can think of no other movie that captures and seals in amber exactly what it means to be a human the way this one does.  It tells no story completely, and doesn't need to.  It is unsatisfying and even ugly at times.  It means at once nothing and everything.  I am not any of the characters in this movie; I cannot relate to them at all.  I am instead the movie itself: a dizzying medley of experiences and stories that mean nothing individually, but everything in their whole.