Crazy Heart (2009): ”It’s funny how falling feels like flying… for a little while”

I’m not necessarily a country fan, at least not if we’re talking the “achy-breaky heart” variety. Then, on the other hand, there’s Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, and … yeah, those guys. Crazy Heart lives at that end of the street, just for a reference. Written and directed by Scott Cooper and based on the novel with the same name by Thomas Cobb, this is the story of a country music singer-songwriter called “Bad” Blake played brilliantly by Jeff Bridges. The whole narrative is actually pretty neatly summed up by the featured song “Fallin’ & Flyin’”. Well, that and “The Weary Kind”.

Before I even get into the turbulent and tragic life that is the downslide of a former country star, let me just take a minute to say that this is the most brilliant piece of casting you could possibly ask for. Bridges’ performance as a hard living, pudgy, constantly inebriated musician is absolutely stellar. This could so easily have been a melodrama, a sad and woeful tale of not wasting your talent with scoundrel ways, but there’s a wealth of humor and experience that Bridges brings to the performance that makes Bad Blake likeable, despite the fact that he is no doubt not a very pleasant person.

You will find the rest of my mad ramblings on the rambling existence of Bad Blake here:    Crazy Heart

Mule

On The Road: Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?

On The Road (2012) directed by Walter Salles is based on the Jack Kerouac novel of the same name first published in 1957, one of the main works of the Beat Generation. It’s not all that surprising that this fierce search for meaning and contexts still manages to fascinate a modern day audience, especially since it lauds the cult of individuality and exploration.

The main protagonist Sal Paradise (Sam Riley) starts his more or less Odyssean journey of self-discovery shortly after the death of his father in a period of acute writer’s block. He is introduced to Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedlund) by his friend Carlo Marx (Tom Sturridge).

Dean is the very epitome of a free spirit. He has adopted an itinerant life-style rife with drugs and jazz and women, amongst which two in particular are of importance here, the young Marylou (Kirsten Stewart) and the more respectable Camille (Kirsten Dunst). It works in heavy contrast with the glimpses of the orderly life Sal leads, living with his aunt, when he meets the brash Dean. There’s an obvious fascination there, with someone who lives their life with such a hectic, exuberant intensity. Dean does come across as a poet warrior bad boy soul, rootless and restless, always willing to go-go-go. That’s the seduction.

If you want to read more of my rambling on the Beat Generation please do so here: On The Road

Mule

Mystery Train: Calling Elvis

Article first published as Movie Review Mystery Train Calling Elvis on Blogcritics.

Mystery Train (1989) written and directed by Jim Jarmusch consists of three parts. It takes place in a curiously de-populated Memphis where the ghost of Elvis Presley is ever-present.
The segments are ”Far from Yokohama”, ”A Ghost” and ”Lost in Space”.

In ”Far from Yokohama” two Japanese tourists Jun (Masaoshi Nagase) and Mitsuko (Youki Kudoh) come to Memphis to see Graceland and Sun Studio. They are there to pay homage to Elvis and Carl Perkins. Through a series of circumstance they wind up at a run down hotel.

The hotel is the common denominator of all three stories, by the way. The Night Clerk (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins) and the Bellboy (Cinqué Lee) feature in all three stories. The same scene replays three times from three different perspectives. The same song plays on the radio, the same DJ (Tom Waits) gives the same patter and the same gun shot is heard three times.

The second instalment ”The Ghost” follows the Italian widow Luisa (Nicoletta Braschi) who gets held over in Memphis with the casket containing her dead husband. She gets accosted in a diner by a man (Tom Noonan) who tells her a story about how he picked up a hitchhiker outside of Memphis who turns out to be the ghost of Elvis. Luisa also winds up at the hotel, sharing a room with Dee Dee (Elizabeth Bracco) who has jus left her boyfriend, Johnny, ironically nicknamed Elvis (Joe Strummer).

The third instalment ”Lost in Space” has three friends, Johnny ”Elvis” (Joe Strummer), Will Robinson (Rick Aviles) and Charlie the Barber (Steve Buscemi). Johnny has just lost his job and his girlfriend, Dee Dee from the previous segment. He is getting drunk in a bar with Will waving a gun around. As we all know alcohol and firearms are a really bad combination and Johnny winds up shooting a clerk at a liquor store. The three guys wind up at the hotel where Will knows the Night Clerk. They hide out in a completely wrecked room at the hotel.

Of course the ghost of Elvis actually makes an appearance in one of the stories, appropriately the instalment called “The ghost”, but even with that he is still all over the story, in his music and in the discussions between the characters. There are portraits of the singer in the hotel rooms, there are references to his music in the dialogue. You can’t help thinking that the various musicians in the cast feel the same way. Even if they don’t like Elvis they still have to find a way to relate to his music and his iconic status.

The funny thing about Jarmusch-movies is that you watch and enjoy and laugh and wince and then afterwards you try to reconstruct what they are actually about, and that’s when you realize how unusual his style really is. There is more interest in the characters moods and the atmosphere of the narrative than any hard core plot driven piece – and I like that. I like the way you tend to amble along with the characters and make small and big observations and then part company, not necessarily resolving anything, but just taking part in a piece of their story.

The movie is off-beat, atmospheric, random and has a lot of downtrodden charm. A lot of the almost animistic atmosphere is due to the lovely photography by Robby Müller, who also shot Wim Wenders’ Kings Of The Road, Barbet Schroeder’s Barfly as well as other Jarmusch movies.

You have to be in the mood for this kind of thing, the odd and different pacing and the loosely held together narrative. If you are this works really well.

Mystery Train (1989), written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, Masatoshi Nagase (Jun), Youki Kudoh (Mitsuko), Scremin’ Kay Hawkins (Night Clerk), Cinqué Lee (Bellboy), Nicoletta Braschi (Luisa), Elizabeth Bracco (Dee Dee), Tom Noonan (Man in Arcade Diner), Joe Strummer(Johnny ”Elvis”), Rick Aviles (Will Robinsson), Steve Buscemi (Charlie the Barber), Tom Waits (Radio D.J.).

Sid and Nancy – Punk Love, Drugs and Music

Sid and Nancy (1986) directed by Alex Cox stars Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious, Chloe Webb (Nancy Spungen), David Hayman (Malcolm), Andrew Schoefield (John Lyndon), Xander Berkley (Bowery Snax), Perry Benson (Paul), Courtney Love (Gretchen).

The thing about a movie like this that it can’t really go wrong, even if it’s not all it could be. It’s sort of like Backbeat that way. The narrative focuses on the relationship between Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. This is recent history, even more so when it was made, so there’s bound to be the requisite bickering about weather or not it’s true to the actual persons depicted in it. It really doesn’t work that way, no matter how much a movie claims to be “based on a true story”. The best you can hope for is a movie that captures something of the essence of things and makes them interesting enough that the viewer can get something out of them.

I saw this one back in the day, and frankly I have no idea what possessed me to see it again now. I must have had a punk moment. It happens.

This is Gary Oldman’s film debut and he is frighteningly good as the out of control Sid. Chloe Webb is equally good as the high-strung Nancy. Everything hinges on that. I remember her whiny, annoying voice from the first time I watched this and it doesn’t get any less irritating with time.

There’s always been controversy around whether or not Sid could even play the bass, but in the context of what they were doing Sid was the embodiment of the punk attitude. What he lacked in skill he made up for in attitude and this movie focuses on that as well, with a rail thin Oldman posturing, prancing and beating up members of the audience.

It is also a good depiction of the gradual decline of Sid and Nancy as they grow increasingly dependent on drugs. Nancy was supposedly the person who introduced Sid to heroin. It is very much a sex, drugs and rock’n’roll movie with a seriously kick ass soundtrack, no matter how bad the music is at times.

There are moments of levity, there’s also big time drama and watching this train wreck of a relationship unfold really puts the ‘fun’ in dysfunctional. It is a beautiful disaster all the way through. It also has moments of fantasy and surrealism, like the music video like sequence in which Sid performs his version of ‘My Way’ or the final scenes where Nancy comes to fetch Sid in a cab.

The look and feel of the movie has stood the test of time really well, leaving it feeling like a documentary in some ways and a completely fictional piece of Peter Pan-like fantasy in others. I have real issues with that last scene, but it fits the Romeo and Juliet aspect of the thing.

The movie is told in a semi-circular fashion, starting as Sid is arrested for Nancy’s murder in the Chelsea Hotel in New York, so even the viewer who knows nothing about the couple will see that this can only end badly right from the start.

It’s also somehow reassuring to know that Johnny Rotten spews vitriol over this movie whenever he’s asked about it. Reality always trumps fiction, and movies are always fiction, which is a good thing to keep in mind.

Sid Vicious died of an overdose of heroin his mother injected him with after he got out of Riker’s Island Prison on bail waiting to stand trial for Nancy Spungen’s murder. It’s said his mother did this deliberately. Life is stranger than fiction no matter how strange the fiction is and that’s why I recommend this movie.

Mule