One of the true good things to happen this past Oscar night was to see Jeff Bridges win for best actor. He’s done a number of great roles and should have been so honored several times in the past. So I was anxious to see if his performance in this week’s release of CRAZY HEART was the best he’s turned in. The answer lies in personal preferences, but he did do a great job here.
Bridges stars as Bad Blake, a once legendary country star who’s seen better days. After years on the road, years of drinking and smoking, years of bad marriages and managers, Blake is doing the only thing he knows how. He travels on his own from town to town playing small locations to make a living. The first of which we see is a bowling alley with a bandstand.
Life on the road has taken its toll on Blake. His health isn’t seen as fatal when we first meet him but the excesses he’s lived through seem to be catching up with him. Along with those excesses comes a certain amount of stubbornness as Blake continue to turn down attempts by his protégé from years back, Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), to help him by buying new songs from him. Having not written one in 3 years, Blake continues on his downward trail.
And then Blake meets a young woman who comes to interview him after a show. Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal) has seen better days and yet goes through life with a smile on her face. A single mother, Jean is attracted to Blake and the two begin a romance that starts with one night and moves into the possibility of a more permanent arrangement.
When Blake falls asleep at the wheel on his way to visit Jean, she ends up having him stay at her place until he recovers. Before leaving the hospital, Blake’s doctor sets the record straight for him: he’s an alcoholic, he has emphysema, the possibility of a stroke is there and if he doesn’t get his life together he won’t be around a lot longer.
Unfortunately Blake doesn’t take the doctor’s advice. Once he’s able, he heads home to heal. But he misses Jean and her little boy Buddy and invites them to his home. Can Blake make the changes necessary in his life to have the family that he longs for but lost so long ago? Or will his desire for drinking and a hard life rule over those dreams?
The movie works well because it doesn’t focus totally on the ills that Blake puts himself through. It offers us enough to realize what his problems are without having to dwell on them or on the effects that his alcoholism has on him and his life. Rather than long passages showing us what’s going on in his life along these lines, we get small glimpses instead. But these are enough to make their point and allow time to show the other side of Blake as well.
We get to see the side of Blake that wants to make amends for his life. We get to see the side of Blake that shows him wanting to take his life in a new direction but finding that there is no easy route to do so. And we get to see a side of Blake that through all the bluster and talk of being the big time country star, he’s still a simple man at heart.
Bridges characterization of Bad Blake gives a depth to the character that some would not have been able to carry off. Blake here is a man that you want to succeed, that you want to see change, that you want to find a better life. At the same time, the story doesn’t move in the normal pattern where everything ends hunky dory half way through.
The actors that support Bridges here also turn in great performances. Gyllenhaal offers a subtle approach to her character. She’s not the doe eyed fan who is overwhelmed by the star presence of Blake. She’s interested in him first as a person she’s interviewing as a journalist and only later becomes romantically inclined.
Collin Farrell (who I had no idea was in the film based on trailers and the like) does a great job as Tommy Sweet. The character is one that could have followed directly in the shoes of Blake, but has instead embraced the fame and fortune in an entirely different way.
Both Bridges and Farrell sang themselves as the characters and it adds a nice touch. It’s always better to hear the actual actors rather than see them replaced in voice over. It adds a nice touch and both actors do a commendable job here.
CRAZY HEART might appear on the surface to be just another story of a musician who fell from grace or another alcoholic tries to find redemption flick. But it’s more than either of those tales. It’s the story of a man who has a chance to change his life for reasons he didn’t know still existed inside of him. And that makes for a great picture and a performance that is indeed Oscar worthy.
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