Blaze Foley (Benjamin Dickey) was a not-very well-known country-blues singer who ultimately became an inspiring figure for many of today’s country stars. Foley (born Michael David Fuller) died of a gunshot wound at 39, but his songs were eventually covered by some of the great musicians in the field. However, if you think “Blaze,” director Ethan Hawke‘s biopic of the man would be any sort of glamorized “Walk the Line“-style riff on the legend, then you’d sadly mistaken.
A love story starts off “Blaze” as he meets his future wife Sybil Rosen (Alia Shawkat), whose book this movie is based on. This unlikely couple hits it off instantly, moving into a remote cabin in the woods, and live the good life together with nobody else around. The movie then cuts to Blaze’s final performance at a bar, barely filled with people, where he tells stories, sings songs and even starts a few fights. Then there are the three record label cowboys — Sam Rockwell, Steve Zahn, and, yes, director Richard Linklater — that see the potential in Blaze, and even sign him to a record deal, one that the singer can’t abide by. Selling his songs to the “devil” isn’t really what he cares to do. To Foley, his songs and experiences are his livelihood, and what make him who he is; success isn’t what he’s after, it’s being a legend.
The 47-year-old Hawke is very much like Foley, an artist that sticks by his ideals. He’s allergic to formula and “Blaze” follows that vision for the unpredictable. The freewheelin’ style in which Hawke’s film is told is very much in the spirit of the man it depicts, and there is an air of authenticity that fills the film as vignettes — important, but small moments that impacted the musicians’ life — and flashbacks within flashbacks are used to compelling effect. Overall, this is astute, fascinating filmmaking from Hawke who believes the small details are all part of the bigger picture, the deeper experience of knowing who Blaze Foley was.
That being said, Hawke’s taste for the unconventional may alienate less adventurous moviegoers looking for a run-of-the-mill biopic. The fragmented narrative, which purposely has no flow or order to it, refuses to answer many questions including how Blaze’s marriage with Sybil fell apart or to what extent his alcoholism affected his life, although a visit to his dad’s hospital bedside does clue us in to where his inner turmoil might have originated from. But this approach is part of the reason why the film works, particularly when coupled with Dickey’s fearless performance. His posture, his heavy walk, and his tired eyes tell a story all of their own.
The songs are stunning, and the film almost plays like “musical” that Hawke has concocted, as about a dozen or so songs are chosen to drive the narrative forward. Heard in their entirety — whether at a bar, a studio or just swinging’ on a rocking chair on the front porch of a shotgun shack — the songs are accompanied by montages with subconscious-like edits of Foley’s life. The rawness of “Blaze” stems from its aimlessness, as it transcends biopic cliches to tell a rather simple story in highly original fashion. Hawke gives us a flawed hero, a man who was flesh and blood, and filled with demons, but who was also a good guy with a heart that could be as a vast as the open sky.
If Foley wanted his legend to live on rather than any kind of popularity, then Hawke has most likely helped in that regard. He’s made a film that rambles, scrambles, fights its way to the finish line, exactly the way its subject would have wanted it to be. [B]
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