Last year, Mickey Rourke should have won the Oscar for his incredible performance in The Wrestler; this year, it should go to Jeff Bridges for his role in Crazy Heart. Mickey didn’t get it last year, and Jeff probably won’t get it this year, but if the Oscar means what the Oscar should mean, that will be a shame.
It’s easy to make big movies about little things, to fill the screen with computer-generated animation that adds a wow factor to a trite storyline, but it’s challenging to make a good little movie about big things, especially important things, such as the failure to live one’s life in a meaningful, productive manner.
Jeff Bridges is Bad Blake, a very old 57-year old country/western singer and songwriter whose life is nothing to talk about. He drinks too much, he smokes too much, and he’s turned to shit everything he’s ever touched in life, especially relationships. He doesn’t have friends; he has frustrated co-habitants of his failed life. He’s talented, no one will say otherwise, but what good is talent when it’s wasted, when it’s only used to buy the next bottle of booze or pack of smokes? When he says to Jane that with her in the room, he realizes how crummy a hotel room can be, he speaks volumes to all of us who find it difficult to accept the best in ourselves and do something important with the gifts that God has given us. Life is so much easier when we don’t demand much of ourselves or from others we run into during the course of a day.
In one of the run-down bars in a deteriorating small western town, Bad meets his second chance, a now-single woman struggling to turn her own life around and provide not just for herself, but for her 4-year-old son. Bad has women, God only knows how or why as he’s dirty, stinks, sweats profusely, and is always drunk, but this woman comes to interview him for an article for the local weekly. Bad tries to duck her questions the way he ducks his life, but she affects Bad in a way that he hasn’t been touched in far too long. This is not just a second chance, but, perhaps, his last chance.
Jeff Bridges could have played it safe, but he lets life hang out over his belt and etch his face. He’s tired, he’s sick, and he’s drinking himself to death, but he assures the string of pick-up bands that join him on all the anonymous stages in the west that he’s never missed a show. He may not make it from beginning to end, but he’s there – and Bridges gets all of it onto film. The secret to performance is to be real, not to act real, and Bridges is real. Some of the scenes are hard to watch, while other scenes are painful, but the performances throughout are authentic, not something that can be recreated with CGA technology.
Colin Farrell has an important role in the film, but you have to look to find his name in the credits. Both Farrell and Bridges actually sing the songs required for their roles, and they both sing well. Knowing that it’s not lip-synced adds to the depth of the performances of both actors. Maggie Gylennhaal sells herself as a world-weary single mother doing whatever it takes to make it through today, afraid to open her life to another man who will, in the end, disappoint her. She knows who Bad Blake is, but she accepts him into her life more because she worries that her son needs a man in his life than because she wants to risk having another man in her own life.
The story is sound, the casting is excellent, and the performances are why I go to the movies. When I think how the media raves about George Clooney being George Clooney while Up in the Air, I cringe to acknowledge that he will receive the acclaim for yet another predictable movie well-suited to his personality, while Jeff Bridges does the acting and deserves the award, but will probably applaud politely while another actor holds Oscar aloft. Sometimes, it’s like being back in high school, watching the popular people get the recognition for the hard work of the people they step on as they climb to the top of the social ladder.
Crazy Heart is not a Valentine’s Day feel-good movie, but it is an important film. The acting is excellent, the story engaging, and the ending appropriate, rather than affirming. It may not be in local theaters, but it will be on the video store shelves and Net Flix future lists soon. See it.
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1 comment:
I have a feeling that Bridges can and will ride the wave all the way to an Academy Award. Especially since Clooney has won already.
The dark horse I wonder about is Colin Firth. He's getting a lot of good buzz from his performance. If Bridges crests too soon, then I think Firth might steal it from him at the Oscars.
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