A washed-up country star isn’t the most original character for Hollywood. In fact, washed-up anything is a good source material for Hollywood – and definitely Oscar material. Robert Duvall won an Oscar for his role as the forgotten country singer Mac Sledge in 1983. Last year, Mickey Rourke played a beaten wrestler. Although he didn’t win an Oscar with his performance in The Wrestler, Rourke received a nomination, and won every other award conceivable last year.
Just last week, Jeff Bridges took home a much-deserved and much-awaited Oscar (his first nomination was back in 1971) for Best Actor as the washed-up country singer Bad Blake in Crazy Heart.
First time director/writer Scott Cooper delves into difficult territory. In the first minutes of the movie, Bad Blake reminds someone over the phone, “I am 57, and I am broke.” Money is not the only problem for Blake as he consumes whiskey in almost every one of his waking hours, he plays in bowling alleys to a handful of audience members, and his former protégée Tommy Sweet has become a superstar with his songs.
Duvall hands the crown to Bridges
This is a story that’s been told over and over for years. That is precisely why it’s a dangerous territory for a director/writer to impress an audience with his debut film. Crazy Heart is a film that it would be hard to refrain from clichés. But Cooper knows what he’s doing, and he has chosen the perfect story to show to the world that a filmmaker of the first order is on the loose. Cooper knows about country music, he knows about country singers, but most of all, he knows about broken people.
Having left behind fame and four wrecked marriages, we meet Blake living life one day at a time. Or perhaps killing himself one day at a time. He’s not a self-pitying man, nor a self-destructive one. He just has no reason to go on. Then enters a younger woman into his life, a young journalist who sees through places in him he had long forgotten. Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal in an Oscar nominated performance) perhaps does not bring a newfound zest for life for Bad Blake, but she definitely stirs something new in him.
Crazy Heart is a film that moves you not through big confrontations or tragedies, but through subtle performances. Both Bridges and Gyllenhaal breathe life into their characters through small moments that stay with you long after the movie. Colin Farrell plays Sweet Tommy, and handing the crown to Bridges, Robert Duvall plays Bad Blake’s friend, both in subtle but brilliant performances matching the leading actors. On another note, you will immediately want to download the Oscar-winning song, The Weary Kind, the ultimate cure for Crazy Heart withdrawal.
Originally published in Hürriyet Daily News on 12 March 2010
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