A Different Sorta Dude
Scraggly hair and beard: check. Smokes pot: check. Often seen with tumbler of favourite alcoholic beverage in hand: check. Has a nickname: check. Walks into a bowling alley and saddles up to the bar: check. Rocks a pair of aviator sunglasses: check. Sleeps around: check. Drives a beat up ‘70s-era vehicle: check. Dresses slovenly: check. Knows a Latino named Jesus: check. Is played by Jeff Bridges: check and check.
All of the above apply to both Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski and Bad Blake, the main character in Crazy Heart – though the latter is a Dude of different feather. When we meet Blake, he’s a 57-year-old, four time divorced, faded country star riding the remains of his own coattails. He drives himself across the U.S. in a ’78 Suburban, barely making ends meet by playing one small club (or in one case a bowling alley!) show after another. A disheveled mess of humanity, he’s drunk pretty much all the time on his signature bourbon, smokes almost as much as he breathes and beds the odd aging groupie. Although he’s rarely lugging around much more than a bottle and his guitar, he’s saddled with plenty of baggage to make him bitter and defeated (he hasn’t written a song in years and his former protégé is a big, wealthy country star), except for those couple hours a night when he’s onstage.
According to Wikipedia, writer-director Scott Cooper originally wanted to do a biopic of Merle Haggard but the rights to his life story were too hard to get, so instead he adapted Thomas Cobb’s 1988 novel, with a main character based on Haggard, Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson – some of the baddest boys to ever pick up an acoustic guitar.
Blake finds salvation in the form a journalist named Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a much younger single mother who falls in love with him. Things star looking up for Blake – he gets along famously with Jean’s young son, accepts a stadium-sized opening gig with the aforementioned protégé (played with surprising authenticity by Irishman Colin Farrell – he even sings!) and decides to track down the son he hasn’t seen for 25 years (noticing a theme here?). But things aren’t that easy when you’re a self-sabotaging alcoholic and screw-ups loom on the horizon.
Critics have decried a few questionable plot choices in Crazy Heart, and many of the secondary
characters feel underdeveloped (e.g. Blake’s best – and maybe only – friend,
played by Robert Duvall). But it’s way easy to overlook in light of Bridges’
stellar empathetic performance. In a lot of ways Blake is like a real version
of the Dude, a man whose lax lifestyle defines him, but it’s caught up to this
cowboy and he wants to change. (Also, there’s nary a soiled carpet, kidnapped
trophy wife or lingonberry pancake-eating nihilist in sight.) Bridges owns the
screen, making the character completely absorbing and adding amazing details,
right down to the way he familiarly pushes on the power window of his Suburban
to get it to close properly – a common problem with vehicles of that vintage.
But the movie is almost as equally held together with music.
Bridges – who previously sang a version of “Ring of Fire” for the soundtrack of
the 2000 movie The Contender – is
absolutely natural as a bar-hardened country outlaw, and performs his own songs
like a natural. Great goddamn songs, too. Not surprisingly, the man behind the
soundtrack is writer-producer-singer T-Bone Burnett (Oh Brother, Where Art, Thou?,
If you like old time country and roots music, the soundtrack is a must. There’s a sixteen-track and extended 23-track version, with plenty of classics, multiple versions of some songs, the Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated Burnett-penned track “The Weary Kind (Theme From Crazy Heart),” and several tracks performed by Bridges, as well as two by Farrell and one by Duvall. If you don’t want to listen to decades-old country in a rundown tavern over some cheap beers, then, well, this just isn’t your kinda movie – go watch Avatar again.
This year’s Oscars sees Gyllenhaal nominated for Supporting Actress and Bridges nominated for Actor in a Leading Role, and bet your beard he deserves that semi-meaningful little trophy. If this dude don’t win, it’ll be a f**kin travesty, maaan.
-Dave Alexander
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