The Gown Student Newspaper at Queen's University Belfast

REVIEW: Crazy Heart

Directing debut film of Scott Cooper, Crazy Heart follows the down and out country singer Bad Blake on his daily trials and tribulations.  Sweeping country landscapes introduce the sensibility of the deep rooted country music genre that fills this film with enigmatic quality.

BY LAURA SHEARER

Jeff Bridges stars as the charismatic and secretive Bad Blake, a man of life’s pleasures, womaniser, alcoholic, chain smoker and apple of his fans’ eyes.  He’s reached an unstable point in his career where he’s no longer making money from song writing and relying on the corporate agent to set him up with small town gigs in bowling alleys and such like to scrape a living. Bad Blake is a laid back man who knows how he wants to live and hates being told otherwise.  This is a film about what a country music star might do when at this stage, when he has known nothing but his music and has nothing left.  He’s lonely but satisfied with his almost rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, still living the dream, yet this time without the money.  Bridges has a really remarkable opportunity and shines through with his truly fascinating characterisation.  Bridges natural subtlety allows him to embrace those moments in the film that procure a seamless comic style, created out of the small everyday mistakes and disappointments.  This element is not only extremely enjoyable, but makes Bad Blake uniquely humanistic and hence we empathise with him and somehow find him gravitating towards the grey areas of appeal.  It’s perhaps all too easy to relapse into the durability of Bridge’s character The Dude, and love this film in the same spectrum.

Maggie Gyllenhaal is the very cute struggling journalist that becomes the perfect match for Bad Blake.  Sharing the same loneliness but of a different sort and through different life situations, she’s his polar opposite.  She’s selfless and for Bad Blake represents all that he’s been running from, until now.  Gyllenhaal gives another enigmatic performance, with a graceful empathy and a strikingly genuine level of emotional devotion.  Colin Farrell is the detestable boy who represents all that Bad Blake hates about the music industry.  He’s the literal embodiment of selling power and provides the audience with a validated reason for rooting for the perhaps otherwise unlikable Bad Blake.  Robert Duvall has a very interesting role, offering him the suave slightly more than cameo part that really seals the deal in a film that puts so much emphasis on the star system.

The on stage performance sequences are shot similar to concert footage and has the inexcusable style of a country music video.  Emphasis is placed on lighting effects and the singers are central to the camera lens, with several swirling 180degree angle shots keep the style instalment fresh and entertaining.  The idea of exciting first hand viewing of the gigs is evident in the camerawork, plunging the viewer into the unexpected fan position, deploying the idolising perspectives of his fans.  As based on the novel by Thomas Cobb, who also co-wrote the screenplay, the dysfunctional world of the fading country artist has never been made so intriguing.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 4:17 pm and is filed under Arts + Ents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.