Crazy Heart

Here’s a move that was supposedly going straight to cable TV until Robert Duvall got a copy of the script from writer-director Scott Cooper (who adapted the novel of the same name by author Thomas Cobb); and then the fellow who wrote some of the songs for the movie, Stephen Bruton, passed away before the film opened. The setup almost sounds like a country music song all by itself, doesn’t it? The word around the campfire is that Fox Searchlight eventually picked it up and then screened it for critics - who were so enamored of Jeff Bridges’ role that Searchlight decided to open the picture and flog Bridges for Best Actor consideration.

They just might be onto something there. He’s got stiff competition in a pretty strong field - including George Clooney for Up in the Air, Colin Firth for A Single Man, and Jeremy Renner for The Hurt Locker - but they say that Searchlight can sell anything, and they almost got Mickey Rourke an Oscar last year for The Wrestler. In a way, you could say that just as Little Miss Sunshine begat Juno, so The Wrestler begat Crazy Heart, though the latter is the only adapted screenplay in the bunch - so it may well have been turned into a movie eventually anyway; but Bridges nails aging country star Bad Blake, a role that seems almost to have been written with acting awards in mind.

Bad Blake is the kind of musician who winds up being the guy that everyone else says taught them everything they know. But at 57, he’s well past his prime and has to spend more time than he cares to talking about the new blood in the industry and whether or not that new blood is “real country.” He’s broke, divorced, and drunk, so he’s not exactly breaking any new ground in terms of characterization; but he’s still out on the road playing his music, and it’s oddly compelling (at least at this point in history) to watch the struggle of someone bucking the odds to keep his head above water.

In fact, what’s most compelling about the character is the inevitable tragedy that seems to be waiting just around the corner to take him out of this world once and for all. He’s careening toward a massive heart attack or a spectacular car crash - maybe even some combination of the two; and he doesn’t really seem to care. He’s not quite willing to lay down and die, but neither is he willing to change his destructive behavior. Just about every synopsis of the film that you will read will say something along the lines of that Blake is looking for that one last shot at redemption and that he finds it when a reporter comes trawling for an interview - an attractive young female reporter called Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal).

Redemption isn’t the right word, but it’s the easiest one to sell. He’s not looking for redemption - at least not through the first two acts; all he's trying to do is make it to the next gig and collect his paycheck (and a free whiskey, if he can manage it). He only starts to look for redemption after he Screws Up Big Time; and it’s when he Screws Up Big Time that the films lurches sharply from a pretty nicely constructed tragedy into the Hallmark-card no-man’s-land of melodrama. The third act is not entirely bereft of nice moments, but those nice moments are only counterpoints to the trite, paint-by-numbers slapdash that is the resolution of the film.

There’s an odd subplot involving Blake’s estranged protegé, Tommy Sweet. Colin Farrell plays the younger musician, but it never looked to me like Farrell was entirely comfortable in the role. He had a bit of trouble with the accent - having to do both American and Country appears beyond his abilities at the moment - and it always looked like he was expecting someone to come up and jump him. Blake won’t talk about Tommy to Jean, but when he and Tommy are together there is no animosity - though Tommy’s assurances to Blake that he hasn’t “forgotten who gave me my start” come off as patronizing.

I’m not sure the subplot is even necessary to the story. Blake’s tragic character and the interplay with Jean might have been enough - but they would have had to do more with Blake and the uncomfortable situations into which he gets himself, and I got the feeling that someone in the writing department (either novelist Thomas Cobb in the original material or Cooper in the script) didn’t want to let Bad Blake get to be too bad. That’s unfortunate, because they took the R rating probably without batting an eye; there are enough F-bombs to make a sailor blush, and with the rating firmly in place, it would have served them well to dig deeper into the tragic thematic elements of the character, rather than having a go at the Lifetime Network ending.

From a technical standpoint, the film is excellent - apart from the shift in tone between the second and third acts. Director Scott Cooper has a clear understanding of how uncomfortable many of the situations are, and he takes care not to linger overlong on scenes once they have said what they have to say. The pacing is crisp without feeling rushed, and the film flows well - up to that moment where Blake Screw Up Big Time. Then the whole thing starts to devolve, but this is not a disaster for the film because of how well it had been working up to that point. Greatness may never have been within reach for this film - ultimately, the story just isn’t strong enough - but it lands firmly in the above average range; and as a vehicle for an acting performance designed to attract awards attention, it certainly achieves what it sets out to do.