Since this blog is not being retired/deaded/put out to pasture/pasteurised/euthanised, it is time to start with the new features. Here's one:
Keep It 1000: A Review In 1000 Words or Less Where We Don’t Ruin The Story
Crazy Heart (2009)
Directed by Scott Cooper
Written by Scott Cooper based on a novel by Thomas Cobb
“The harder the life, the sweeter the song”
This movie begins with a dude. A Dude in the Rio Bravo Dean Martin tradition of an alcoholic Cowboy at the end of his rope, struggling to hang himself, if only he could keep his hand steady. Not literally. Read on dear cinephile, there are no suicide spoilers in this review.
Crazy Heart is a film about a dude digging himself. Our hero is played by the soft and weathered Jeff Bridges, known for playing THE Dude in The Big Lebowski (Coen, 1998). The Lebowski comparisons are ineveitable and may be claptrap that you’ll hear a horn-rimmed greenhorn spouting over ironic PBR (ordering cans, in a bar, dude they have TAPS in bars) this weekend, but permit me one observation: Our dude, in this film, shows up at a bowling alley that is not a respite nor office nor social club: it is his venue. Former superstar Bad Blake has been reduced to playing dives across a lonely, infinite, and panoramic American Southwest that is as filled with vistas as our protagonists chain smoking and sour mash barf bouts are tinged with hubris. This is a whole other breed of dude and the opening scene at the bowling alley is a firm reminder that we will not be seeing Jesus, the bowler or the saviour. Through Bad Blake, Bridges gives us a bitter and haunted glimpse at a entertainer who has been going through the motions for so long that he doesn’t know his wheels have come off and his truck is in the ditch.
The film moves like a road trip or a tour. There is no stopping its move towards resolution at the edge of a final breathtaking vista. The dialogue is casual, the characters real, the scenes wear jeans. You can feel the disaster looming, and there are plenty of broken strings, disconnections and showers of gravel along the way, but what makes Crazy Heart feel so good is that it is tender without being too sympathetic. The journey for Bad Blake is fraught with trouble, but only the kind of trouble that he has earned, and is willing to take to the bank and find out what it’s worth.
The life of the country musician has almost made Blake as irrelevant in the world of the living as he is in the music industry. This film handles the change in country music, where the once badass heroes of slang, twang and doin’ thurr thang have been replaced by pop stars. Contemporary country embodies little of the outlaw spirit that is at the core of western, rap, rock and much of the powerful lyric driven music of our times. This film is not a Country song about how sad it is that you can’t make a decent country song. It is a tip of the Stetson to the solid axiom that problems need to be fixed, be it in your life, your craft or your love. It just happens to be about a country musician, and having lived in the country and the city, we all need to listen to more Country Music (which is provided by T Bone Burnett who brought Appalachian Folk to the suburbs in Oh Brother Where Art Thou, so he might just get slow burner tear-in-my-beer Ballads to downtown headphones).
The world of Crazy Heart is backed-up by the reality that a country musician can still sell records. That the songs these guys and gals record in Nashville and Los Angeles still get bought. The stakes are high in this regard, and for Bad Blake the dirt road to renaissance is waiting to be paved with tears, the mud, the blood and the beer. This is what makes Bad Blake decent to watch. The fights that cause a Cowboy to get thrown through swinging saloon doors and into the shit filled gutter are the beating heart of the Western Music that made us deify Johnny Cash with regard more to what he had learned than how much cash was rolling in. Bad Blake is knocked down, but he’s not dead yet, in fact he is just getting up.
The Dude Jeff Lebowski could abide. Bad Blake doesn’t get to choose. Jeff Bridges takes us on a trip through the music and country in which a man who truly “fits right in there” has to be able to stand under his own power and deliver it.
Jason Parker Quinton
Additional Notes That Should Encourage A Viewing:
1) Maggie Gyllenhaal felt a few years too young as the love interest, but her performance is detailed and captivating as usual. My friend Allison thinks she is “too thin” and that Hollywood needs to get their shit together and put some real women on the screen. Not just emotionally real, but with hips (see Precious (Daniels, 2009). But, ya know…white women… not named Streep.
2) Robert Duvall is in it. There is a scene where Jeff Bridges and Robert Duvall go fishing and talk about fatherhood. Yo!
3) The film was preceeded by a trailer for the upcoming “Kenny Chesney In 3D” which underscored where the music and cinema are at right now. The tricks and the cheese are all accepted easily, but great characters, handled with aplomb by filmmakers who take their time still seem to be acceptable.
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