Dear Ryan Bingham:
Thank you for existing. Thank you for being involved in Crazy Heart. Because of the many, many excellent films I have lately seen (Avatar wrapping me up in a beauty so painful and desperate I didn't want to leave the theater, It's Complicated, Precious, Sherlock Holmes, Up In The Air, Young Victoria, A Single Man) this is my favorite. Where do I begin?
A classic (cliched?) tale of redemption and sobering up, yeah, sure, it's that. It's cigarettes and bourbon and voices that growl. Tipped cowboy hats, old Silveradoes, and wannabe desperadoes. But oh, the music!
(The shots of the scenery made me want to move to Texas, by the way.)
Gosh, I think I should talk about the music last. There are a few surprises, you see. And I think this is worth talking about:
Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal have the strangest and most intoxicating chemistry. How could she fall for him? And yet you believe she loves him -- maybe because she does? Because who among us would say we don't love our childhood idols? And here he is, in the flesh, an old-timer fallen from any kind of grace. And she has the chance to do something for this person she admires -- I suppose I can see why she might fall in love with him. They work so well together and their performances are simultaneously delicate and appropriately intense.
When she flips out while he's writing a song, it's hard to tell if it's because, as she initially says, "People would give ten years of their lives to write that; it just pours out of you," or if it's because she really is afraid that he will leave and forget her and she'll be stuck in Santa Fe remembering. Because remembering someone who doesn't remember you, that's the absolute worst sort of pain. And I bet she doesn't even know why she's angry.
Surprisingly good in this movie? Colin Farrell. I'd forgotten my Irish love was in it. And I'm not surprised he was good, because In Bruges and A Home At The End Of The World are two of my all-time favorite movies. It's surprising exactly HOW good the boy can be. Granted, he looks the part, exquisitely beautiful but also sort of run ragged? Yeah, that's Colin. And he's always managed to manipulate my emotions pretty well; he does an especially fine job in this movie of making Tommy Sweet not so detestable, maybe more sympathetic, even.
And, well, the singing? The soundtrack? Robert Duvall started reciting one of the saddest songs I've ever heard, by one of the saddest men I've ever heard of. He brings up Billy Joe Shaver and suddenly the movie has the sort of relevance and legitimacy that other movies only dream of. "Live Forever" is such an epically sad song, especially when you consider that he, Billy Joe, wrote it with his son Eddie, who would die of a drug overdose. (On that issue, Todd Snider would write, "I can't say I felt so sad; the truth is I think I'm mad at the selfish way you left your dad when you know what a hard-luck time he's had." He can say that; he was friends with him.)
And then the lyrics, "You fathers and you mothers, be good to one another. Please try to treat your children right. Don't let the darkness take 'em; don't let 'em feel forsaken; just lead 'em safely to the light." Or maybe it's, "Nobody here will ever find me, but I will always be around. Just like the songs I leave behind me, I'm gonna live forever now."
It's just so sad, you know? (Send me your email and I can end you a father's day version of this song, performed with Robert Earl Keen and Todd Snider.)
But here's the biggest surprise of the film: Jeff and Colin can both sing. I know mixing boards can do amazing things, but they both do really wonderful jobs of singing the songs they are commissioned with. The whole soundtrack is rugged and good-looking and real country. Not "New Country" or "Nashville" country, which is something they acknowledged in the film. Someone asks Bad Blake what he thinks of Tommy Sweet and his reply is, "He's gotta compete with the stuff coming out of Nashville." (Granted East Nashville is a different world, but still.)
The music is just.. Townes Van Zandt and Ryan Bingham and Waylon Jennings and George Jones and Lightnin' Hopkins and it makes me want to move to Texas and I kept thinking, "There's just something about country music Texas-style." I feel like I'd do really well in Texas. I don't even know how to say how much I love country music and how good the music in this movie was. So fucking good, maybe?
But as Todd and this movie point out... I like country... When it rocks. I like country when it's real. (When it's sung for the school of hardest knocks, not for mass appeal.) And that's what this movie is -- a country song on film. It's old-school, hard-core country. Dusty, beat-up, and bad. And Ryan Bingham, you did such a job in this film. It feels like that moment in the movie, when he plays a new song and asks Jean if she's heard it before. She says she can't remember who did it, but she knows she's heard it. Bad is clearly pleased and says, and this sums up the film perfectly:
No comments:
Post a Comment