There’s a hell of a lot going on in “Nashville,” but Altman - pretty far ahead of the game at that point - strongly suggests that politics, when you get right down to it, is nothing but an extension of show business. Or maybe he’s saying that the rich and famous that walk among us are just as lost as everyone else, regardless of the so-called promise of complete “freedom.” Or maybe that’s just what concerns me when I consider the “Nashville” tableau.

Again, the swirl of events offers up a wide variety of interpretations, so here’s a list of the characters that hit me the hardest when I watch the movie. Your attention will be at least partially drawn in different directions, and you may even interpret the actions of these characters differently than I do:

* Haven Hamilton (Henry Gibson) is the overlord of “Nashville,” the King of Country Music whose folksy smarm barely conceals a massive ego and driving ambition. “Nashville”’s opening sequence - during which Hamilton records a bullshit-laden paean to, among other things, the glory of getting shot up in American wars - is jaw-dropping, a fittingly audacious opening salvo. There’s something disquieting about this character and his Hank Snow-white jumpsuits. He’s a peculiar mixture of compassion and calculation, a frightening boss-man who knows a sellable tune when he hears one, then proceeds to sell the living shit out of it. No wonder he’s being wooed for a transition into politics.

* Barbara Jean (Ronee Blakely) is America’s sweetheart, the country music survivor in the full-length prairie dress who’s just a couple steps away from being completely bonkers. Blakely’s big moment is an excruciating, extended meltdown on the stage at Opryland that quickly moves between sweet reminiscence and outright horror. Much as Randy Newman does with his most effective character studies - that’ll be a different column - Altman allows viewers to implicate themselves when they impulsively laugh at something that turns out to be extraordinarily ugly. Unnerving art, it would seem, requires an unnerving audience.

* Barnett (Allen Garfield) is Barbara Jean’s gruff, harried manager-husband. Barbara Jean’s career would seem to be Barnett’s main concern, but there are moments when he shows surprising sweetness and compassion toward her. He’s as complex a minor character as you’ll find in any American movie, even though Garfield and Altman almost came to blows during filming because Garfield inexplicably wanted his girlfriend to write his dialogue!

* Linnea Reese (Lily Tomlin) is the only white singer in an otherwise all-black gospel choir. She’s married to Delbert, a hard-working local businessman (Ned Beatty) who’s helping set up a fundraiser for a Presidential candidate. Linnea and Delbert’s children are deaf, and it’s a telling moment when you realize that Delbert has never even bothered to learn sign language so he can readily communicate with them. But Linnea’s story becomes one of “Nashville”’s more fascinating strands when she unwisely attempts an affair with an over-sexed rock star (Keith Carradine). Tomlin’s quietly shattering performance could be the best in the entire movie, but she’s not even remotely convincing as a gospel singer. Her song is one of the briefest on the soundtrack, for good reason. Otherwise, this is the strongest work of Tomlin’s career.

* Lady Pearl (Barbara Baxley) is Haven Hamilton’s aggressive, hard-drinking wife. Although she gets less screen time than many of the other actors, Baxley makes every second count. In the early going, she has a screamingly hysterical argument with Gibson about the correct lyrics of song they both vaguely remember, and, later, she delivers a strange, heartfelt monologue about her commitment to John and Bobby Kennedy. You can’t quite put your finger on Pearl. She seems simultaneously smarter and less perceptive than Haven, a woman with a lot of heart and character who’s somehow ended up a cog in an absurd showbiz machine. As crazy as she can appear, you feel like she deserves better.

* Hal Phillip Walker (the voice of Thomas Hal Phillips) is the never-seen third-party presidential candidate (for The Replacement Party.) Walker’s campaign van, which tools through town blaring his simplistic but sometimes perceptive revisionist political speeches, serves as the connective tissue between the characters. Just as he did with the humorous public address announcements in M*A*S*H, Altman repeatedly uses Walker’s ramblings as a kind of aural wipe between settings and situations— when the van shows up, he just follows it down the road to another location. It’s an ingenious way of making such a wide-ranging film hold together. Phillips, the guy who wrote and delivered the speeches, was a real-life southern political wheeler-dealer who genuinely believed everything “Walker” said. Years later, it was noted that his cockeyed cynicism-optimism was a dead ringer for the intellectual chicken-scratchings put forth by Ross Perot during his failed Presidential bid.

Be prepared— there’s a lot of music in “Nashville,” and Altman often sticks with an entire performance, from beginning to end. The actors also wrote their own songs (!) so some of the tunes are less effective than others. But all of them serve a much broader purpose than the songs do in most “traditional” musicals.

In “Nashville,” you not only learn about the characters through the songs they sing, you realize they're selling a particular perception of themselves as people. The film’s viewers, in other words, can tell when they’re lying. This unique little twist adds considerable depth to "Nashville"'s music, and turns even the lesser songs into wryly ironic adventures. (Carradine, by the way, actually won an Oscar for his singer-songwriter confessional, “I’m Easy,” which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Jim Croce album from the period.)

Over the course of its 160 minute running time, “Nashville” is “about” many different things. But, at its core, it concerns itself with America's unending capacity for finding all the false truths it can devour. Yes, politics is the same as show business, and show business is the same as politics. But in the end, the only reality is that we all get royally screwed by the madness of the system.

Somebody ought to write a song about it.

Paul Tatara