Crazy Heart Review

Crazy Heart
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell, Robert Duvall.
Written and Directed by: Scott Cooper.

Starring as Bad Blake, a once-prominent country singer whose life has been nearly shattered by hard living and booze, Jeff Bridges once again reminds why he has been one of the most consistent and important actors of the last 40 years in his latest film, the unexpected and nuanced indie, “Crazy Heart.”

Blake lives his life like one of the country songs he sings in his liquor-soaked sets. He’s flirted with huge success, ruined four separate marriages, lives one bottle of whiskey at a time, and doesn’t have a relationship with the one son he knows about. But just as it seems Blake is going to be destroyed at the hands of his demons, fate graces him with many opportunities to amend his ways and finally have the opportunities he wants.

Fate gives him a job in the form of a songwriting gig for Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), his protégé who eventually surpassed him in money and fame but never forgot where or who he came from, and a woman named Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), an aspiring music journalist and single mother Blake meets in Santa Fe, who despite her difficult past, tries to love Blake for the man she thinks he can be.

Now, it’s true, the down-and-out country singer who tries to change his ways with the help of a loving woman is not the most original film concept ever conceived (see the even-better 1983 film “Tender Mercies”), but this film by first time writer/director Scott Cooper elevates beyond the clichés by the surprising decisions he makes and the lovely and simple performances by his lead performances.

First and foremost Cooper, adapting the 1989 novel by Thomas Cobb, has injected a light touch and unexpected humor to a story that could have been bogged down by its own seriousness. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its gravitas; it has heaps of it, but just when you think the film is going to descend into a woe is me diatribe, it brings you back with a beautiful humanity. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Jean, with a hopeless romantic heart and delicate strength is just like the audience; she, despite all of his red flags, has fallen in love with Bad Blake just like we have.

Most importantly though as we’ve seen in other musical films such as “Ray,” about Ray Charles, “Bird,” about jazzman Charlie Parker, or the Johnny Cash film, ”Walk the Line” it’s so important that we as the audience are drawn into the musician’s magnetism, their presence on stage; we need to understand why audiences are drawn to them. “Crazy Heart” is no exception. The musical numbers sweat with an authenticity. You’ll believe that all of these new original songs written by T Bone Burnett and Stephen Bruton, including the film’s theme song “The Weary Kind,” have been hits for decades.

Even though Bad Blake is a fictitious character, he’s brought to vivacious and startling life by the genius that is Jeff Bridges. Ever since his breakthrough in the 1971 classic “The Last Picture Show,” Bridges has showcased a realism and a naturalistic quality in his acting that has made him severely underrated in forty year career. He doesn’t have the determined focus of Robert De Niro or the volcanic spurts of a Sean Penn. He’s a restrained naturalist. It’s the way he looks at someone after they’ve delivered a line of dialogue, or the way that he laughs at the reality that has become his life; it just feels so lived in, so present, so charming. It’s his unadorned purity as an actor that seems like a much more difficult task than the typical grandstanding and scenery chewing.

The film occasionally gets trapped into the clichés that it mostly avoids and that can be a bit disheartening, but for the most part “Crazy Heart” is like a good country song. We’ve heard it all before, but it takes a real stylist, a true artist, to make it seem all shiny and new.
Grade: B