Jean Craddock "interviewing" Bad Blake; image courtesy of filmreviewonline.com
I caught Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart earlier this week, along with the underwhelming Bright Star and heavy-handed Food Inc.. Unless I sneak in a matinée viewing of Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, I should be done with my Oscar viewing for tomorrow night’s ceremony, which I will watch with a few friends at home. Pile my plate with helpings of “A Single Manicotti,” I’m uh, serious, man.
So, back to Crazy Heart. As I mentioned in a comment I left on Caitlin at Dark Room‘s Oscar round-up, I thought this one was pretty boring. Very “for your consideration,” but with ultimately low stakes. Washed-up country singer Bad Blake has a chance at redemption, if he can just manage not to forfeit it all for another bottle of booze. Will he turn “Good”? Who cares really? It’s a victory lap for Jeff Bridges, who is predictably great as Blake. He’s a lock for Best Actor, though I really want Colin Firth to win for his devastating performance in Tom Ford’s A Single Man. If they gave Oscars to comedic performances, I’d have elected for Bridges to win for The Big Lebowski.
One actor I was pleasantly surprised about was Colin Farrell, who plays Blake’s more successful protegé Tommy Sweet. In a part that could have been one-dimensional, Farrell mines a lot of pathos for a character caught between his artistic integrity, conscience, and responsibilities as a career artist at a major label. My only complaint with Sweet is that his music is too similar to Blake’s. The lack of differentiation makes sense, as Ryan Bingham, the late Steve Bruton, and T-Bone Burnett wrote the songs for both characters. Yet if Sweet is meant to represent Nashville’s commercial sensibilities, I’d like more of a musical contrast between the two. Keith Urban is closer to how I imagine Sweet really sounds.
But my real problem is with Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Jean Craddock. It isn’t to do with her performance, which is nominated for Best Supporting Actress. It’s purely a screenwriting problem, one I sensed would be there going in. I hate when my suspicions are confirmed.
Craddock plays a music journalist who is trying to get an interview with Blake. But her occupation is of little concern, as she’s in bed with him after their second meeting. We know very little about Craddock besides her profession, her residence in Santa Fe, her status as a single mother to a young son named Buddy, and that she’s made some bad decisions about men. We never learn what led her to music journalism. We actually never learn what music she might like beyond a passing comment about Lefty Frizzell that’s meant to prove to Blake that she’s knowledgeable enough to interview this particular fallen country legend. And we never get a sense of what being a music journalist means to her, though we do discover that she moves on to another publication at the end of the movie. Basically, she’s just Blake’s love interest, regardless of how Gyllenhaal tries to spin it.
Being cast as the supporting character to the male lead is de rigueur for actresses, and Gyllenhaal is no exception (see also The Dark Knight). Quality pictures are vulnerable to this trap. Contrast Gyllenhaal’s Jean with her leading role in Laurie Collyer’s 2008 indie feature Sherrybaby, where Gyllenhaal also plays a single mother. However, there she’s the protagonist and struggling to overcome addiction and earn back the custody of her daughter. I haven’t seen Sherrybaby yet, but I wonder if it does a better job developing Gyllenhaal’s character than the rushed, sketchy Crazy Heart.
But my biggest problem is with Craddock’s lack of professional integrity. Now, I’ve never worked at a publication. Thus I can’t say for certain whether journalists have engaged intimately with interview subjects. Assuredly, some have. But my journalism degree and sense of ethics assure me that it’s a clear breach in conduct. It could have been avoided or at the very least should have been made by Craddock with more internal conflict toward her personal life and professional aspirations. This isn’t to say that Craddock doesn’t value her job. Rather, I think it’s that screenwriter/director Cooper doesn’t value Craddock’s characterization. It’s all about Blake, and that’s too bad.
sherrybaby is fucking *brutal*. do not watch alone. gyllenhaal gives a stunningly brave and nuanced performance as a supremely fucked up woman whom i wanted to hate but couldn’t as the film showed me how she got that way. i had trouble watching the whole thing in one sitting; i can’t imagine how it was to spend weeks filming it.
i quibble with your reading of gyllenhaal’s role in the dark knight. [SPOILER] it wasn’t a starring role, sure, but rachel wasn’t just a symbol or an ornament. she’s a tough, smart, professional lady who explicitly rejects the role of symbol in her letter to bruce wayne, read in voiceover after her death. she’s not going to let her life get subsumed in his drama. i hate that the script makes that happen, anyway, but from her POV, in her own words, rachel goes down fighting.
Fair point about Rachel in The Dark Knight. I also liked her character (though hated that she died, to the point that I tried talking myself into thinking that she lived). I haven’t seen Batman Begins and don’t want to compare actors, but I get the impression that Gyllenhaal did more with the role than Katie Holmes, who originally played the part. Regardless, I remember hearing that Gyllenhaal added things to her character (who wasn’t in the comics, as she pointed out on Jon Stewart), including her brains and professionalism.