CRAZY HEART is a great film that centers around a grizzled slab of a man, on the waning sunset years of life, battling addiction and years of neglect to once again regain his faded glory. At his side, an inspiring young woman hides scars of her own even as she acts as the muse that triggers his valiant comeback. If all this sounds familiar, it is. It’s impossible to ignore the fact that no matter how excellent Crazy Heart is, the screenwriter should pay royalties to Robert Siegel, writer of The Wrestler.
Jeff Bridges plays Bad Blake, the Randy “The Ram” Robinson of the country music circuit. Bad Blake resembles a leathery strip of jerky extracted from the maw of Kris Kristofferson, or perhaps just a slightly less haggard Merle Haggard. On the downward slope of his career, Blake swaps Opry gigs for empty bowling alleys in Pueblo, Colorado. His best material was been co-opted by a former protégé named Tommy (yes, just like in Hedwig and the Angry Inch), and Blake has settled into a life of kissing the bottle and chain smoking in seedy motels.
That is, until he crosses paths with local writer Maggie Gyllenhaal, who turns his life around and gives him momentum to live again. It’s a fantastic tale, with a solid soundtrack; too bad it all seems so familiar.
Uh, Crazy Heart is based on a novel published in 1989 or 19 years before the release of The Wrestler. Director and co-writer Scott Cooper actually WAS trying to make a biopic about Merle Haggard but had trouble securing all of the life rights and then turned to Thomas Cobb’s novel as a source which was inspired by the down and out careers of various country musicians (Cobb was a music journalist in Arizona when he began writing Crazy Heart). If anything Crazy Heart (AND The Wrestler) for that matter owe debts (that I’m sure the filmmakers/writers would acknowledge) to the 1983 film Tender Mercies. It stars Robert Duvall as a once successful country musician struggling with alcohol addiction and seeking a new life with a woman and her son while also looking for forgiveness and closure with his ex-wife and a daughter he hasn’t seen in years.
So, no, Crazy Heart ISN’T The Wrestler Part 2.
No, I haven’t seen this movie, but I plan to. Those crazies at the NY Times love it, call it a masterpiece, but jeez, what do they know? As to classic themes of the genre called “tragedy”, yeah, like man, those Greek plays, those operas, those centuries of literature, like those themes are so repetitive….. , excuse the sarcasm, I am flummoxed by the critic. I say, ignore this person, who indicates neither cinematographic nor literary sense of history, nor understanding of the unfathomable power of archetype, yet has a job critiquing film. But I respect Mr. Caraeff’s right to an opinion. Yet the human drama is repetitive, art is expected to inform, deepen, and enrich through a more metaphorical sense of what the French call bulot dodos (work, sleep), reference to the grind of the Rat Race. The Rat Race which one might flee briefly in darkened halls of flickering image called movie houses. Sex is repetitive, eating is repetitive, but can be so mystical, so fun, so alive. Mr. Caraeff, why is this? I never get tired of stories about redemption, they uplift my spirit.