By Ainsley Wagoner
The elements of what makes a movie worth paying to see can be replicated fairly easily: celebrity producers, a couple of Hollywood heavy-hitters to share the spotlight, and an iconic, biopic storyline. But just because you have all the right ingredients doesn’t mean the product is desirable. We have all seen movies that should have been good, where the formula was set up correctly but the equation somehow fails. Amelia, anyone?
Crazy Heart’s set-up is nothing new; its framework is calculated and practiced. Jeff Bridges as Bad Blake and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Jean Craddock are hardly risky newcomers in the lead roles. Add Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell as supporting actors, paired with a straight-from-a-novel biopic plot of a musician with a past full of mistakes, and the plot starts to seem familiar.
By now everyone knows about Crazy Heart’s Oscar nominations, and somewhere between my writing this and press time a little golden statue may indeed wind up on Bridges’ mantle. So the point of this can hardly be whether or not this movie is good. (It is very good, if you are wondering.) The point is, rather, what is it that makes a movie formula succeed sometimes, and fail at others? Or perhaps even that question is too large. What is it that makes this movie—despite staying well within the bounds of what has been done in the cinematic art form—so good?
For me, it was immediately evident. The first shot of Bridges’ character, Bad Blake, shows the aging former country star emptying a bottle of urine into the parking lot of the bowling alley where he is scheduled to play that night. I knew right away the kind of honesty and private relate-ability that this movie had in store. These kinds of details fell into place within the larger story, allowing the work as a whole to move beyond cliché and into the realm of relevant: the sweat stains and worn elbows on Bad’s denim shirts and the way his accent was at times indecipherably thick; Jean’s bra straps beneath cheap tank tops and her hand-me-down minivan.
Beyond the details, the characters struck that brilliant chord of becoming impossibly familiar to the audience. Jean is every smart, cautious, protective mother who has ever taken a chance on something she sees in a man and then wished she hadn’t. She is driven and strong but not immune to believing that people can be better if they are given the chance. Bad is every man with a string of failed relationships and career endeavors that still has a recognizable spark of great talent. When they meet, their characters are in two completely asymmetrical places in life. He is burnt out, and has stopped trying to achieve any goal but still clings to the system of playing show after show for a pittance, spending what little money he has on whiskey. She has built a thick wall around herself to make a stable life for her four-year-old son and works hard to support them by writing at the local paper.
The movie charts the beginning of their relationship at that moment when, against any rationale, it seems that who two people used to be will not matter. A new start really seems possible and everything is full of hope. There is a light in the bleak landscape of Bad Blake’s late nights and hungover mornings. Everyone is holding their breath for a happily ever after. But, like real life and any good story, things don’t go so smoothly. Jean’s doubts and Bad’s substance abuse make fools out of them both for believing in a fresh start. Things fall apart again, and both are back where they began.
At that point the character development really begins and the movie’s namesake is revealed. The whole point of life is not that someone will save us, or that love will turn a new page and make us better people, but that love makes our hearts crazy enough to keep trying, and to not give up. And through the attempt, we may be able to save ourselves.
This movie isn’t good because it contemplates love. It’s good because it speaks on so many levels to the life experience. First, it looks at an artistic life fallen short of poetic glory, and the kind of hopelessness that plays out offstage for a country musician whose songs speak to many but whose life is at an all-time low. Second, it comments on the value of a lifetime of experience in music and art, and how those that adhere to their methods get left in the dust by newer, trendier, sexier talent. Third, it asks whether we are defined by our previous actions or if there really is a possibility of revelation or even improvement. And lastly, and most importantly, the film frames two completely real characters in both their most unremarkable and most capture-worthy moments.
Crazy Heart is a successful movie because it bridges the gap between life and art. It does not focus primarily on life influencing art or art influencing life, but the inseparability of the two. In the end, what makes a movie formula really work depends on whether the film has some sort of applicable value to our own life experience. And in the case of Crazy Heart, the proof is in the pudding.
PULL OUT QUOTES IF YOU WANT THEM:
The film frames two completely real characters in both their most unremarkable and most capture-worthy moments.
What makes a movie formula really work depends on whether the film has some sort of applicable value to our own life experience.
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