‘Tanner’ plays with politics

Robert Altman and Garry Trudeau’s “Tanner on Tanner,” which revisits after 16 years the characters of the HBO art-meets-life political miniseries “Tanner ‘88,” will not be everyone’s cup of TV. In spite of the occasional unexpected crossover hit, Altman is the least accommodating of American filmmakers, with an abiding disinterest in popular notions of clarity and narrative, image and sound. Instead, with his long lenses and overlapping dialogue, he makes little symphonies of chaos, teeming with incidental -- the film equivalent of a Brueghel painting. Trudeau’s own unconventional storytelling rhythm, meanwhile, springs from the funny pages; in “Doonesbury,” he’s working on a 30-year story arc. Neat endings need not apply.

I find it exhilarating. Television is rarely lively or lifelike. (Including the shows that purport to represent “reality.”)

Airing Tuesdays in October on the Sundance Channel (with rebroadcasts throughout the week, and successive airings of the four half-hour episodes on Halloween), “Tanner on Tanner” is a bagatelle in the director’s oeuvre, closer to “The Company” than to “Gosford Park,” or even to “Tanner ’88.” That 11-part epic spanned the length and breadth of the Democratic primaries, from winter to summer and coast to coast, inserting fictional candidate Jack Tanner (Michael Murphy) into that year’s actual presidential race. It examined as much of the electoral process and the construction and destruction of image as six hours would allow. (It is being released today on DVD by Criterion.)

This less ambitious but very fine sequel -- more amused observation than trenchant examination -- mainly concerns daughter Alex Tanner, played by Cynthia Nixon (of “Sex and the City”), now a director and teacher of documentary films and trying, with little success, to finish a film about her father’s failed bid for the White House. (This is the film Alex is seen making in the introductory material Altman and Trudeau created for the Sundance Channel rebroadcast of “Tanner ‘88” earlier this year.) Now, as then, she is sweet but high-strung, committed to good causes yet self-obsessed, susceptible to nice shoes and almost painfully serious. (Unusually well-rounded for a TV character, in other words.) “I only know how to make one kind of film,” Alex tells an interviewer, “truthful.”

But she is built for disappointment, and the filmmakers’ have some fun keeping her from success. “I want some ... closure on this project,” Alex wails. But things will get worse before they get better, if they get better.

“Everyone’s making movies,” observes cameo player Martin Scorsese (twice), more or less stating the series’ real subject -- an appropriate one in a year in which politics has become at least partially trial by documentary. There are cameras everywhere. As Alex makes her film about her father, one of her students (Luke MacFarlane) is taping her for his own project, sometimes surreptitiously. At the Democratic convention, in a long and excruciatingly funny scene, she tussles with Alexandra Kerry -- daughter of the current nominee, a filmmaker and an excellent comedian -- over a double-booked interview with Ron Reagan (who is also very good). At another point, Altman’s crew shoots Tanner’s crew filming filmmaker Michael Moore, just another lens in the media crush.

The cameo is an old Altman strategy, going back at least to “Nashville” and most vividly exploited in “The Player.” Here, it gives the production a certain heft that offsets the limitations of its budget. (Like “Tanner ‘88,” “Tanner on Tanner” is shot on video, though it is not constructed as a mockumentary). We get Tom Brokaw, Harry Belafonte, Al Sharpton, Steve Buscemi (almost spilling wine on Mario Cuomo), Richard Gephardt, Chris Matthews, Howard Dean, Janeane Garofalo and Al Franken, among many others. The politicians, not surprisingly, are good at playing politicians; actor Murphy seems even a little stiff beside them. And Sundance honcho Robert Redford appears at the end of tonight’s opener as a kind of “celebrity ex machina,” catalyzing what plot there is.

Among the other players returning from “Tanner ‘88” are Pamela Reed as Tanner’s former campaign manager, now a consultant to Sen. John F. Kerry (whose younger self is fleetingly seen with Jack Tanner in footage from the original series); Ilana Levine and Matt Malloy as former Tanner campaign hands now working with Alex; and Jim Fyfe as a Tanner pollster turned Log Cabin Republican but still viewing the world as an agglomeration of statistics. Aasif Mandvi joins as Muslim soundman Salim, who slates each take with the words, “Speed, God willing.”

Just what Altman and Trudeau make of all this activity isn’t exactly clear, though one does sense a bit of old-pro disapproval. But “Tanner on Tanner” functions ultimately as a character piece woven into a real moment in time -- and to that end it also functions as a kind of highlight reel of the Democratic convention, reproducing a good bit of Barack Obama’s rousing keynote speech, as well as bits of Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, and around 50% of likely voters should find it appealing on this level alone.

*

‘Tanner on Tanner’

Where: Sundance Channel

When: 9 tonight

Rating: TV-14-L (may be unsuitable for children under 14, with an advisory for coarse language)

Michael Murphy...Jack Tanner

Cynthia Nixon...Alex Tanner

Pamela Reed...T.J. Cavanaugh

Matt Malloy...Deke Connors

Ilana Levine...Andrea Spinelli

Executive producers Robert Altman, Garry Trudeau, Adam Pincus. Writer Garry Trudeau. Director Robert Altman.