“Crazy Heart” (2009)
Last weekend I tried to see Avatar, but it was sold out. Instead I saw Crazy Heart, and I wasn’t disappointed. Jeff Bridges is a drunk, has-been country singer who once played to stadiums and now gets booked to bowling alleys. When he’s interviewed by a pretty young journalist, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, they both see something in the other. Though what she sees in him, with his aging skin puffy with drink and his breath undoubtedly reeking of cigarettes, is more of a stretch than what he sees in her. The love scenes feel a bit creepy because of this, but maybe they’re supposed to. Also, look at all the rock star/supermodel pairings.
The movie covers no new ground; it’s a mash-up of two recent Oscar-bait films, The Wrestler and Walk the Line. It’s not happiness sucking and soul crushing, as I found The Wrestler, though. Instead, like Walk the Line, it’s got a charismatic lead character played well by the actor, supported ably by the female lead and actress, with good music, well performed.
In “When Bad Movies Happen to Good Actors,” Lisa Schwartzbaum from Entertainment Weekly notes why good performances are more likely to get awarded when they’re in good movies,
while acting is a combination of skill and art, an award-worthy performance is an amalgam of science, technology, and luck. And finally, what you think of as a great performance has as much to do with how much you enjoy the whole movie experience – the plot, the music, the quality of the snacks, the smell of the moviegoer to your right – as it does with one actor’s ability to cry and another’s to kickbox or crack eggs. Yes, they’re only movies, but sometimes everything works.
I think Crazy Heart is an example of a solid, well-done movie for which both Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal deserve Oscar nominations. Heck, even Colin Farrell is good in it, as a southern country star!
At NPR’s Monkey See, Joe Reid agrees and counts it among the five non-best-picture nominees that you should see anyway, because of its “strong performances and beautiful music.”