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Starring Jeff Bridges in his Oscar-winning role of a once great country and western singer, Crazy Heart is a sleepy jewel that comes draped in pedal steel and soaked in whiskey, according to Peter Wild.

Some films are like fever dreams. Shutter Island, say. Some films – like say Jim Jarmusch’s most recent, The Limits of Control, are like essays on film. And some films – films like Jeff Bridges’ latest, Crazy Heart – are like songs. Country & Western songs to be exact. Like his co-star Robert Duvall’s earlier (and also Oscar-laden) movie, Tender Mercies, Crazy Heart comes draped in pedal steel and soaked in whisky.

Bridges is Bad Blake, a once great singer with his best days behind him, given to performing in bowling alleys and bars to a handful of people and a smattering of applause – not that he cares too much, often stumbling from the stage in an alcoholic haze to vomit in the dumpsters while the band pick up the slack and do what needs to be done. Hooking up with a youngish reporter (played by the always excellent Maggie Gyllenhaal) following an interview he conducts in his pants from a motel room, we come to see the kind of man Blake is through a filter of rags and patches (like a song, scenes don’t always seem to follow on, one from the other, one moment the two lovers are just getting to know each other and the next they are fighting about how she should’ve known what he’s like). Drunk, for the most part, and bitter about the successes bestowed upon his protégé, Tommy Sweet (played by Colin Farrell), Bridges is in top form, rightfully deserving the Best Actor nod he picked up at this year’s Oscars.

Although it’s stately pace might not be to everyone’s liking (Crazy Heart is more of a character piece than a high-octane, narrative fuelled slice of gung ho), the sharply nuanced performances of the two leads, Bridges’ shot at redemption through his relationship with Gyllenhaal’s four year old son and Bridges’ own cuts at the microphone (including Ryan Bingham’s ‘The Weary Kind’), make this something of a sleepy jewel, provided you have the patience to let the film get where it’s going in its own good time.

 

Peter Wild on 27th May 2010
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