Christopher SoallCrazy Heart: A Review
April 4th 2010 16:08
You’ve got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues, and for Bad Blake, well, he knows that it doesn’t come easy. In the performance that finally garnered Jeff Bridges the Oscar that he has lost out on at so many different ceremonies, it is that inherent lack of easiness that becomes the focal point that any critique of the film will invariably focus on.
Of course, it is by no means new territory that director Scott Cooper treads, but ‘Crazy Heart’ seems to fail to hit the human or emotional content that genre-defining films like ‘Tender Mercies’ provide, along the same structural spines.
As a formerly successful country and western singer, Bridges’ Blake is reduced to travelling from dive bar to bowling alley (a setting that Lebowski fans would have raised a smile at) meeting genial but scarcely encouraging bartenders/owners/band members. When he encounters a new pianist he is set to perform with, however, things change for Blake, meeting the pianist’s journalist relative (Maggie Gyllenhaal); he is introduced to a love that even makes him reconsider his decision not to help out the protégé who has become a bigger star than he ever was in his prime.
The problem with this film, for me, is how timid it is. From the mildly dismissive characters that Blake encounters before he falls in love; to his hero worshipping disciple (Colin Farrell) and the wise friend that he returns to (‘Tender Mercies’ star Robert Duvall), there isn’t enough genuine, thought provoking human conflict.
While Maggie Gyllenhaal’s performance as a hard-working journalist is sufficiently filled with the behavioural nuances that one would expect from a single mother whose baggage extends way beyond the son that she has to raise herself; there is no reiteration or exposition-free suggestion of why she is so fragile. Some scenes, like the one where Gyllenhaal’s character tries to convince Blake that her son should go to pre-school, when he suggests that the boy would have more fun on a day out with Uncle Bad, is a deftly crafted observation on the behaviour that comes from a person not trying something because she is genuinely afraid she might like it.
The desperation in Bridge’s performance too, is heart-rending; but the scenes that lead up to it smack of something where the writer has set-up something that could really make a dramatic impact on the audience, but has timorously retreated to safer territory. When Bridges, in an unconvincingly drunk and negligent state, loses the boy while on their day out, there is the suggestion that he might suffer a heart or kidney failure, but it amounts to nothing. The boy is found safely. A more pioneering film may have implied other consequences of the lifestyle that Bad just can’t shake off, and a tragic reiteration for his love interest, that she keeps making the wrong choices.
And Duvall’s character too, seems to be there to offer not only Blake, but the makers of the film, reassurance that it isn’t all so bad, that the best has been made of it.
It is difficult to say for sure, but it seems that the presence and performance of the fine actors cast seem to elevate the film. Credit where it is due, Bridges and Gyllenhaal are excellent, but they are let down by a clichéd and safe script.
Some of the more technical aspects are triumphs too, and it would be unfair of me not to mention the beautiful cinematography, and the captivating songs that run through alongside the scarce but nevertheless wonderful little touches like Bad Blake placing his hat over the microphone and retreating to the backstage area to throw up.
Overall, a fairly mediocre story punctuated by moments of brilliance, both technically and performance-wise.
It perhaps would have been more evident that Cooper has paid his dues if he wasn’t so seemingly convinced that the film wouldn’t have been made if he had taken more risks - I would have found the blues that he sang much more effective that way.
As a formerly successful country and western singer, Bridges’ Blake is reduced to travelling from dive bar to bowling alley (a setting that Lebowski fans would have raised a smile at) meeting genial but scarcely encouraging bartenders/owners/band members. When he encounters a new pianist he is set to perform with, however, things change for Blake, meeting the pianist’s journalist relative (Maggie Gyllenhaal); he is introduced to a love that even makes him reconsider his decision not to help out the protégé who has become a bigger star than he ever was in his prime.
The problem with this film, for me, is how timid it is. From the mildly dismissive characters that Blake encounters before he falls in love; to his hero worshipping disciple (Colin Farrell) and the wise friend that he returns to (‘Tender Mercies’ star Robert Duvall), there isn’t enough genuine, thought provoking human conflict.
While Maggie Gyllenhaal’s performance as a hard-working journalist is sufficiently filled with the behavioural nuances that one would expect from a single mother whose baggage extends way beyond the son that she has to raise herself; there is no reiteration or exposition-free suggestion of why she is so fragile. Some scenes, like the one where Gyllenhaal’s character tries to convince Blake that her son should go to pre-school, when he suggests that the boy would have more fun on a day out with Uncle Bad, is a deftly crafted observation on the behaviour that comes from a person not trying something because she is genuinely afraid she might like it.
The desperation in Bridge’s performance too, is heart-rending; but the scenes that lead up to it smack of something where the writer has set-up something that could really make a dramatic impact on the audience, but has timorously retreated to safer territory. When Bridges, in an unconvincingly drunk and negligent state, loses the boy while on their day out, there is the suggestion that he might suffer a heart or kidney failure, but it amounts to nothing. The boy is found safely. A more pioneering film may have implied other consequences of the lifestyle that Bad just can’t shake off, and a tragic reiteration for his love interest, that she keeps making the wrong choices.
And Duvall’s character too, seems to be there to offer not only Blake, but the makers of the film, reassurance that it isn’t all so bad, that the best has been made of it.
It is difficult to say for sure, but it seems that the presence and performance of the fine actors cast seem to elevate the film. Credit where it is due, Bridges and Gyllenhaal are excellent, but they are let down by a clichéd and safe script.
Some of the more technical aspects are triumphs too, and it would be unfair of me not to mention the beautiful cinematography, and the captivating songs that run through alongside the scarce but nevertheless wonderful little touches like Bad Blake placing his hat over the microphone and retreating to the backstage area to throw up.
Overall, a fairly mediocre story punctuated by moments of brilliance, both technically and performance-wise.
It perhaps would have been more evident that Cooper has paid his dues if he wasn’t so seemingly convinced that the film wouldn’t have been made if he had taken more risks - I would have found the blues that he sang much more effective that way.
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