Sunday, January 17, 2010

Crazy Heart

Jeff Bridges played a washed up country star named "Bad Blake" in a movie with a similar story to the Wrestler. As an alcoholic and a chain smoker Bad is like a bad habit. After playing in a Bowling Alley we know that his life is at a dead end. A creative void. The most important aspect of music being the connection between the singer and the soul had been dead for years. Bad Blake goes through his life like a distant out of body observer. With the mysterious alter ego and the constant haze he faces life with (or maybe that was just the booze), we see into the soul of a dead man walking. Relationships have come and went but ultimately they go faster than they seem to come. Later in a glimpse of an instant, Bad seems to want to reach out to a person of his past, his son who quickly shuts off from any contact. When Bad then painfully admit to Janie played by Maggie Gyhennal what has happened, he explains quickly that he wasnt there. For most of the movie it appears he isnt there. The camera pans away to show a dismal glimpse of a life torn beaten down from stardom. The only thing left for him is a bottle of whiskey and small bars with the last remaining dedicated fans. We get the sense that Bad Blake is a shadow of what he used to be drifting in and out, with his tight pants and cowboy hat. His relationship with the writer embodies nothing as he tries to see her when he isnt on tour. While drinking one day, he loses her young son in a mall. Bad has lost it, everything his career, his old relationships and he remains crazily running/limping around to find it. At the end he almost does with a new song and a sober life, but Blake lost too much to his addiction, even the song reflects that. "The Weary Kind" refers to the lonely and broken spirited who flit through life like phantoms of their previous selves and thats what Bad Blake or Otus does till the end.

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