Crazy Heart is an example of an otherwise standard, so-so film that is elevated by a powerful central performance, in this case by Jeff Bridges, who is cutting a swath through the awards season, deservedly so.
The story, which can be rightly assessed as the country music version of The Wrestler, concerns Bridges as “Bad” Blake, a washed-up country star who has just about bottomed out, but is redeemed by the love of a good woman. This is hardly new territory, but as long as Bridges is on screen (which is just about one-hundred percent of the time) I didn’t mind the occasional lapses into TV-movie triteness.
I will give writer and director Scott Cooper, who adapted a novel by Thomas Cobb, credit for economy of images. We learn just about everything we need to know about Bad when he steps out of his ancient vehicle in a bowling alley parking lot. “Fucking bowling alley,” is his first line, and he dumps out a bottle of road-piss onto the asphalt. Bad is fifty-seven, at one time a star, but is now playing for small crowds and small paydays at small venues, this time in New Mexico. He is an alcoholic, and though he never misses a show, he barely makes it through them, as his gig at the bowling alley is punctuated by a sojourn to the alley to vomit.
In Santa Fe he does a favor for the local piano player and gives an interview to the man’s niece, who turns out to be Maggie Gyllenhaal. He is enormously attracted to her, and she kind of digs him, too, even though the first time she sees him he’s wearing nothing but a towel. The only thing she doesn’t like about him is that he’s a drunk, but the two fall into an easy rhythm together and he becomes attached to her four-year-old son.
Gyllenhaal is about thirty years younger than Bridges, and there is that uneasy feeling that accompanies these May-September romances that the movies are full of. Gyllenhaal is a fine actress, and convinces me she falls for Bridges, but it would have been much better for the story if an actress about ten years older had been cast (Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei were much better matched in The Wrestler). As it is it remains too much of a fantasy for those men who will never see fifty again.
The plot then goes into TV-movie land, as Bridges shares that he has a son he hasn’t seen in years (and what do you know, the boy was four the last time he saw him, the same age as Gyllenhaal’s son!) and a cheap, child-in-jeopardy sequence. The scene exists to move the plot along, as Bridges decides he must dry out, but it’s a shame that Cooper couldn’t have come up with a more clever device than this one.
Despite all this, Crazy Heart has many pleasures. The songs are great, and Bridges sings them well. Robert Duvall, who is one of the producers, shows up for a small role, reminding us all of this film’s ancestor, Tender Mercies. Watching Bridges and Duvall together is lovely. The film also contains a restrained performance by Colin Farrell as a big country music star who was mentored by Bridges.
But it all comes back to Jeff Bridges, who holds this film in the palm of his hand. He’s best during those scenes when the character is at his lowest–during a scene where he passes out over his toilet I could practically smell the vile odors that would have been emanating. When he wins the Oscar for Best Actor I won’t mind a bit, it’s a shame the material doesn’t match the performance.
Gone Elsewhere 
Isn’t the degree of difficulty on this sort of scene extremely low, however? The makeup people get you all haggard-looking, you spit some pea soup out and dunk your face in the bowl. Voilà. When’s the last time anyone watched a vomit scene and said to themselves, “You know, this actor just doesn’t have the chops to pull this off?”
Bridges is a fantastic actor, but the entire role felt like this to me – it’s a giant, inflatable softball, and all he has to do is bunt the runner home from third. Granted, Bridges is more subtle with a lot of these tropes than other actors might have been, but I also saw a role that, not only could he have played it in his sleep, but critics would be congratulating him for keeping with the character had he done so.
I despised most of this movie. I didn’t believe that the Gyllenhaal character would have wanted to finish the initial interview with him, much less sleep with him. I wanted to throw stuff at the screen when the kid went missing, since only movies that are at their wit’s end, dramatically speaking, would ever cop to such a transparently manipulative ploy. I thought the songs were mostly bland, generic country, although to be fair, I guess that doesn’t actually preclude one from being country star.
I feel a bigger detachment from the critical community on this one than I have with any movie since probably The Fountain, although that one worked in the other direction.
Actually thought about the same thing when it comes to the difficulty of actors performances, and whether that should be some sort of factor.
Last year had a good example, when Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke were squaring off over the Academy Award. Sean Penn was arguably playing someone quite removed from himself but was still believable. As opposed to Rourke, where much of the strength of his performance lay in the similarities to his career, along with the lengths and depths he went to show that.
To me it seems you can land in one of two camps on this. Either you can admire the technique and skill you believe was required, or you can look at how much the performance affected you.
After watching both Milk and The Wrestler, I’d say Rourke deserved the award more than Sean Penn did, but that’s an emotional decision, since I don’t know how difficult the role of Harvey Milk was for Penn.
I suppose I’ll feel the same way if I ever see this film, i.e. does it affect me?
I think you’re selling the Rourke performance short. Besides the emotional aspect of the role, which I feel was more sophisticated than you’re allowing, it was also a tremendous physical performance. I don’t know how much personal experience Rourke had on the pro wrestling circuit but just try to imagine how many actors could “look” like a wrestler. I’m not just talking about bulking up, but having that very specific kind of presence in the ring.
Think about it this way; there have been hundreds of sports movies through the years. Were Dennis Quaid or Jamie Foxx as believable as football players in Any Given Sunday and Rourke as a wrestler? Or John C. Reilly – or even Kevin Costner – as a baseball player in For the Love of the Game? Or Tim Robbins (or Costner) in Bull Durham? I imagine that almost anyone else in Rourke’s place would have been a rank embarrassment. Who else can you think of that would even be plausible?
I also doubt that Penn is as far removed from Milk as you imply. Sure, he’s different in terms of voice and mannerisms, but all of Penn’s public statements indicate that his personal convictions matched with Milk’s. Obviously actors can go horribly wrong with voice and mannerisms but it’s not like he’s Rick Santorum playing the role.
At any rate, I had a somewhat different definition of ‘degree of difficulty’ in mind. Whether Rourke is sufficiently like the Ram or Penn like Milk in real life is, I agree, mostly beside the point. But it is my contention that just about anyone of the street could play a puke scene and make you believe it. And for that matter, just about anyone with any skill at all could play a sullen alcoholic without making you think twice. Almost anyone could have been in this role, I feel, and we’d now be hearing about how it’s the role of his life if the actor was respected enough for people to care. It’s a quintessential Oscar-bait type role. That it is Bridges we’re now talking about is simply good luck for him, and not really because of anything he did in the film*.
But could we have said that about Rourke’s role in The Wrestler? Absolutely no way in hell.
* – I want to make it clear, by the way, that I like Jeff Bridges.
Brian, I think you’re right. There are certain roles that get Oscars no matter who plays them. You guys are all too young to remember, but when it was announced that the play Children of a Lesser God was going to be made into a film, I thought to myself, whoever gets the part is going to be in the Oscar chase. Sure enough, Marlee Matlin, who was a complete unknown, won the award, and no slap at her, it was going to go to just about any deaf actress who got the part.
With Crazy Heart, we have the double-whammy–an Oscar bait part, with an actor who is well respected but previously unrewarded. That’s just how it goes. But I did think Bridges added something to the part–in almost all his work he fits the character comfortably–there’s no visible strain, or obvious ACTING! That’s my opinion, anyway.
Just wondering, Brian, who would you give the Best Actor Oscar to? Doesn’t have to be one of the nominees–who do you think gave the best performance of the year?
Good question. I don’t remember any real standouts offhand, and while Actor is usually one of the strongest categories, it’s pretty weak this year. I’ll take a look and get back to you.
To answer the question, I’d probably vote for Matt Damon in The Informant! or Michael Stuhlbarg in A Serious Man. In that order for now, but it may change based on whichever I watch again first.
I think I’d vote for Damon, too. But he ends up nominated for a thoroughly pedestrian role in Invictus.
Exactly. Also – Tucci for The Lovely Bones? Is there a person on earth who would defend that in public?
If it wasn’t clear, I do admire Rourke’s work in the role greatly, more so than Penn’s work in Milk, even if I think you’re dismissing a pretty huge chunk of what is acting by saying he mostly got the “voice and mannerisms” right.
Actually, I think this is a pretty big point.
Rourke bulking up the way he did was extremely impressive, but if Penn had taken the role would he have done differently? It would have been a different portrayal, but the bulking up and doing a good acting job I don’t think is in question.
Rourke on the other hand, even aside from the physical non-resemblance, could never convincingly have played Milk.
But Rourke was, by the same token, probably better suited for the role of Randy the Ram than Penn would have been. And I was more affected by his portrayal of Randy than I was by Penn’s Milk.
So taking into account how difficult an acting job was for the actor involved is doing the film and indirectly the actor a disservice.
I feel that what you should be going for is if the actor is believable and if you are engaged in the performance, irrespective of whether the puking scene was hard to do or not.
I guess what I would say here is that obviously casting is important, and it would be foolish to ignore that casting is important. If an actor is not able to play a role convincingly, it’s hard for me to blame the actor; he never should have been cast in that role to begin with.
Now, that said, if I were to vote for awards, I would go beyond simply whether “if the actor is believable and if you are engaged in the performance,” for the very obvious reason that such a standard rewards high-profile roles that don’t actually require large amounts of acting skill. We see this all the time in the Oscars, and the result is that the best performances typically are ignored.
My question is, what performances required the most actual acting skill? It’s a tough question to answer, especially since I’m not an actor, and “acting skill” is admittedly a vague term that’s difficult to define. And, of course, a lot of what people usually think of as “acting” is really either fundamentally a casting issue or a direct result of a choice made by the director.
So, now that I’ve talked myself in a circle … maybe you’re right, and that all we can really evaluate is how we respond, as the audience, to the performance. After all, it stands to reason that the most affecting roles are the most difficult for the actors anyway, for the very simple reason that more challenging material in the end makes for a more rewarding experience.
But I’m still not about to be impressed by puking into the fucking toilet.