Jeff Bridges, sporting shaggy, shoulder-length hair and a matching salt-and-pepper beard and speaking in a marbleized Texas drawl, doesn’t so much consume “Crazy Heart,” his terrific new honky tonk drama, as much as is the movie.
Bridges plays Bad Blake, a country singer of some forgotten prominence who now bounces around the Southwest playing gigs in shitty little clubs and bars. He’s a (barely) functioning alcoholic who pukes before shows and whose life now consists of banging old lady groupies and watching Spanish soap operas in the fleabag motels of each small town he visits. Recently Blake achieved a moderate amount of success by mentoring and writing songs for a hot young country star Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), who has already far eclipsed Bad Blake’s fame.
While in Santa Fe, a young reporter named Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal) interviews him. This is a nice little device to get some of Bad Blake’s background (but only as much as he’s willing to share), and soon enough a romantic relationship blossoms between those two. Of course, you’re thinking, they’ll get together. The relationship does eventually blossom in an organic and engaging way — she’s looking for a father figure as much as she’s looking for a sturdy man — but the biggest sticking point of the film is how quickly their romance initially flourishes as it feels a little hurried. Why would she fall for this boozing, overweight has-been? Well, that’s slowly revealed, and it’s a testament to the performances that you start to believe in this pair quicker than you’d imagine.
Even though it’s an underdog story, one that has the familiar (sometimes predictable) story beats that make the genre a hallmark, writer-director Scott Cooper (adapting the novel by Thomas Cobb) is much more interested in characters than forward momentum. For the first half of the movie, this may seem like a detriment, but by the emotionally charged second half, you understand that the movie had to take its own, ambling time. Because that’s the way Bad Blake would have told it. So, “Crazy Heart” doesn’t sell itself completely well in the first half and it feels like an above-average CMT movie initially. But then, that second-half kicks in, and the bottle is drained and we’re left with emotionally naked and powerful stuff that truly makes you a believer. “Crazy Heart” earns its pain and that’s nice to see.
Even Blake’s triumphs are tinged with melancholy and Cooper’s plainspoken visual style, which combines postcard-worthy vistas of the surrounding environment with loving close-ups of the actors’ faces, gorgeously translates this. There’s a shot of Bridges, who is looking down, and the scrunched-up lines on his forehead (there seem to be a million of them) just says it all. All of the characters (even Robert Duvall’s jolly bar owner) have pain in their lives, and part of the magic of the movie is watching them slowly free themselves from that anguish.
It doesn’t hurt that the music, by Stephen Burton and soundtrack czar T. Bone Burnett, is so fucking good. We only hear a handful of Bad Blake’s classics (at first this seems like a letdown but then it makes perfect sense — these are the only songs that people want him to play, over and over again), but they’re all toe-tapping gems. The titular song, which he conceives as the movie goes along (he can’t finish it until he gets his shit together), is gorgeous and heartfelt and absolutely wonderful. It’s very similar in spirit to Bruce Springsteen’s weary “The Wrestler” theme, but if this song gets equally snubbed by Oscar it will be a travesty.
But back to Bridges. For almost his entire career he’s flown under the radar, delivering amazing character actor performances from underneath a boyish movie star face. In recent years, however, with his good looks fading under a mess of wrinkles and facial hair, he has freed himself and given us some of his career-best work. Even if he just pops up for a few minutes, like when he was growling at Robert Downey Jr. from inside a mechanized behemoth in “Iron Man,” he steals the shows and totally brings his characters to life. In “Crazy Heart,” he delivers one of the performances of his career. But the miraculous thing is that, like Mickey Rourke in last year’s “Wrestler,” his performance feels effortlessly natural. It’s a towering achievement and something that Bridges just seems to inhabit. Everything about Bad Blake, from the way he shuffles down a garish Texas mall to how he wears his sunglasses, is so fully realized that you absolutely feel for him. This isn’t about being dazzled by a performance, although there is that too, it’s about being connected, 100% with a character. It’s wonderfully soulful, three-dimensional acting and yes, as you’ve heard it’s very likely going to win Bridges an Oscar nomination (plus he’s been overlooked so many times now — four times — it stands to reason this will be his, “you deserved it all along” make-up award).
The other actors are great, too. Gyllenhaal, in particular, brings a heartbreaking emotional layer to the film as a small town music journalist with a small child. She’s had a great year, first with her scene-stealing performance in the otherwise forgettable “Away We Go” and now here, in a role that lets her shine. She may get involved with this fuck-up, but she’s a surprisingly strong characters and has to make decisions that break your heart but also make you cheer her on. Oh, and Farrell and Duvall are strong too.
Cooper, who is (shockingly) a first time director, has put together a marvelous little movie.
Its smallness is one of its largest assets, and grounds you in the emotional truth of these characters. With a truly remarkable performance at its center, and a novelistic interest in characters over stuff actually happening, “Crazy Heart” may meander, but man is it gripping. It’s like a country western song you can’t get out of your head. And one that you can’t wait to hear again. [B+] — Drew Taylor
