Under the heading “so old it’s new,” let us now consider Crazy Heart.
This movie’s story of a has-been country singer seeking and finding redemption was already quite familiar when Robert Duvall played a similar character in 1983’s Tender Mercies. But in the going-on-30 years since that film won hearts and Oscars, the movie business has gone in a whole other direction. It’s not just that the vast majority of films today rely on special effects to make their points. It’s that, even when they rely on actors more than computers, the stories they tell usually have an at-best nodding acquaintance with recognizable human beings doing recognizably human things. Screwing up relationships. Drinking too much. Doing their work the best they can.
So, it came as kind of a shock when, well into the film, this thought occurred to me: there’s no kind of foolishness in this movie at all. Everybody is acting like people that I know. Instead of the usual crap there is the magnificent wreckage of down-and-out country singer Bad Blake, played of course by Jeff Bridges, who deserves all the praise and Oscar talk that has been bestowed on him.
If you just look at the story, the clichés really do pile up. Bad is an alcoholic who sabotages relationships and his professional life with drunken behavior. Then he meets a good woman who loves him, but needs for him to straighten up and sober himself up. Which he proceeds to do, while reinventing himself as a songwriter in the process.
The clichés do break down at this point, and the movie finally goes in an unpredicatable, but satisfying direction.
Still, the tremendous pleasure the film bestows has little to do with its story. It’s mostly in the performance of Bridges, who mixes pride and emotional need in just the right proportions, and who looks like Waylon Jennings come back to life. And the songs, mostly written by the late Stephen Bruton and the great T-Bone Burnett, are characters in their own right. They add nearly as much emotional weight to the film as Bridges does.
Besides the novelty of its being about the trials and tribulations of a finally rather ordinary person, the movie had another surprise for me as a Houstonian. I hadn’t known that a good bit of the film is set here, if not shot here. (I think there’s just a single establishing shot of the skyline.)
But I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised after all. Thomas Cobb, the author of the novel Crazy Heart, wrote the book under the tutelage of Donald Barthelme in the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. In a recent interview, Cobb even said that the character of Bad Blake was in large part based on the hard-drinking, chain-smoking Barthelme, who was about Bad Blake’s age when he died of cancer.
It’s a shock to think of the rough-hewn Blake as being inspired by the professionally ironic, jazz-loving postmodernist, but once you’re past the surprise you realize that Cobb was writing an alternative ending to the Barthelme story. Cobb may not have intended this—he published the novel before Barthelme got sick. But watching the fine film made from Cobb’s soulful novel, you can’t help but wish the old master had himself checked into rehab before it was too late. Watching Bad Blake do so gives the great consolation of art; it can correct the mistakes of life.
Movie Review
New horror movie Sinners sings the blues with twin turn from Michael B. Jordan
Writer/director Ryan Coogler has become so well-known for his blockbuster films — Creed, Black Panther, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — that it’s easy to forget that he made his debut with the small-but-powerful 2013 film, Fruitvale Station. After more than a decade, he’s finally returning to original material with his latest film, Sinners.
Each of Coogler’s films has either starred or featured Michael B. Jordan, and this one gives moviegoers a double dose, as Jordan plays twins who go by the nicknames of Smoke and Stack. Set in 1932, the two hustlers have recently returned from mysterious (and possibly criminal) work in Chicago to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi to open a juke joint.
They call upon a number of friends and family to help them with the venture, including cousin and guitar player Sammie Moore (Miles Caton), Smoke’s old girlfriend Annie (Wunmi Mosaku), piano player Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), bouncer Cornbread (Omar Miller), and Chinese couple Bo and Grace Chow (Yao and Li Jun Li). Trouble is never far from the brothers, though, whether it’s Stack’s old girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), the Ku Klux Klan leader who sold them the property for the juke joint, or something even more sinister.
Coogler began his feature film career by confronting the issue of unjustified shootings of Black people by police. How Black people are perceived by society has been a part of everything he’s done since. By placing this film firmly in the middle of the Jim Crow era, he infuses the story with all manner of subtext, including the injustice of sharecropping and prevalent segregation in the South.
Music, specifically Blues, plays a big part in the film as well. It’s championed through the emerging talent of Sammie and the veteran presence of Delta Slim, but it’s also a driving force for other parts of the plot. Sammie is decried by his pastor father for playing “the devil’s music,” while strange newcomer Remmick (Jack O’Connell) seems to appreciate it a little too much. A fantastically surreal scene at the juke joint turns into an entertaining and educational lesson on the history of Black music.
It’s Remmick’s obsession that’s at the center of the final hour or so of the film, one in which all hell breaks loose. The manner of that hell is probably better enjoyed if it’s not spoiled here, but suffice it to say that Remmick has an evil to him that threatens to destroy Smoke and Stack’s venture before it even gets started. The horror aspect of the film is fine, but it winds up being the least interesting part of the story.
Jordan can occasionally go over-the-top with his performances, and with him playing twins the threat of doing so was doubled. But he remains relatively restrained for most of the film, giving each twin their own unique spin. Caton, a rising R&B singer, makes his acting debut in the film and winds up stealing every scene he’s in. The rest of the cast complements each other well, with Mosaku and Steinfeld being standouts.
Coogler has proven himself to be a savvy filmmaker in each of his previous four films, and with Sinners he combines the personal with crowd-pleasing elements to great effect. It features great music, an insightful story, and even some gory action for an experience you’re not likely to find anywhere else.
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Sinners opens in theaters on April 18.