Crazy Heart (Scott Cooper, 2009): USA

Reviewed by Danae Thomas. Viewed at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, Lobero Theater.

Crazy Heart (Scott cooper, 2009) is a comforting entertaining film about a country singer Bad Blake played by (Jeff Bridges).  After the show Mayor Helene Schneider presented Jeff Bridges with a letter of recognition from the city.

The characters are an intriguing part of the film, there’s Bad Blake who’s a country singer and doesn’t know how to stop drinking. Bad’s girlfriend Jean played by (Maggie Gyllehhaal) who was also in The Dark Night (Christopher Nolan, 2009) has trouble finding a good man for her and has to raise her child on her own.

Bad Blake is what you could call a lazy guitar playing, country singer who is not as successful as his opponent Tommy whom everyone loves. When Bad meets Jean he’s attracted to her right away and they hit if off from the beginning. Throughout the film their relationship starts to grow until an incident happens which cause them to go separate ways and encourages Bad to become sober .

The acting in this film is quite phenomenal with Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal being our main stars of the show. These performances made the audience quite convinced that they were playing their roles as I found myself and the people around me engrossed in their characters wanting to see what happens next to them. Bad Blake’s character somehow reminded me of the Dude in The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen, 1998) because both characters are quite lazy. The Dude has no job whereas Bad Blake is a country singer but other than that he lays around his house drinking alcohol. Maggie Gyllenhaal also did an extraordinary show of being Bad Blake’s girlfriend as she kisses him with passion and makes the audience believe that she’s attracted to him. We also believe that she’s a single mother as she’s treating Buddy as if he’s her son by holding his hand and talking to him in a sweet loving voice as mother’s usually do.

What I found interesting about this film is that Bad Blake is white whereas his opponent is a minority and is more successful than Bad. The audience erupts in screams when Tommy enters the stage; there’s a scene in the film where Bad is playing his songs and the crowd suddenly starts getting excited, crying out and Bad is smiling thinking they’re loving him finally and we see Tommy coming onstage to join him to get the audience aroused.

The mise-en-scene is well done; I felt that whenever Bad was performing onstage that I was part of the audience watching as the setting looked like a concert with the stage, bright lights on the performers, and a large audience. I thought it was great that the camera would have point of view shots with Bad playing and we were looking out at the audience. It gave us an idea of what it is like for musicians to play for a large audience.

If you’re a person that enjoys good country music, and actor/actress Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhhaal than you will highly appreciate this film.