Wide Open Spaces and the Sound of Silence

Quiet.

Slow-paced.

Character study.

Not words you’ll hear used to market many movies—especially in the era of blockbusters and Cineplexes—but for a film to truly be affecting, to give us, its audience, the opportunity to connect with its characters, it must involve no small amount of moments that involve just such things.

In the same way each of us need time, silence, and solitude to become our best, deepest, richest, most inwardly complex selves, a film needs a certain pace and space for characters to live and breathe. A life fitted with time to think, space to meditate, to contemplate, to be, is essential for soul building. A story imbued with quiet not only allows character to develop, but enables us to connect.

And nothing’s more important.

Stories are magic, are sacred things, because they give us multiple lives, infinite incarnations, endless opportunities to so indentify with a character that we become that character, that we experience existence from inside another.

Of course, this can be done during the quiet moments between action sequences or battle scenes, but the more the moments, the more deeply we experience the other, and if an entire story is thus, well then, all the mo’ betta’.

“Crazy Heart” is just such a story—a quiet, slow-paced, character study. Affecting. Moving. More.

Fifty-seven year old Bad Blake is a minor legend as a country singer. But that status only nets him gigs in bowling alleys and bars. Bad is an overweight, chain-smoking alcoholic. He is informed by a doctor that his self-destructive lifestyle will send him to an early grave. This self-destructive behavior has also led to several failed marriages and a grown son who he has not seen since he was four. While performing in Santa Fe, Bad meets newspaper journalist Jean Craddock, who wants to do a piece on him for her newspaper. Despite the differences in their ages, Jean and Bad begin a relationship. Jean and her four year old son Buddy become the closest thing to family Bad has. Not coincidentally, during this time, he experiences a resurrection of sorts in his career, but what looks to be a promising professional and personal future may be jeopardized by his hell-bent self-destructiveness.

“Crazy Heart” is a good enough film, but it’s the performances that elevate it into something worth recommending. Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal are quietly mesmerizing.

As I watched “Crazy Heart,” I kept thinking that what I was seeing was a remake—or at least the spiritual offspring—of “Tender Mercies.” And then Robert Duvall made an appearances (and later I find out he produced it), and it confirmed the connection between the two films for me.

“Tender Mercies” stars Robert Duvall (in an Oscar-winning performance) in a touching story of a down-and-out country singer named Mac Sledge who meets Rosa Lee, a young widow (Tess Harper) in a small Texas town. But as their relationship blossoms, Mac’s years of hard living resurface when his music star ex-wife (Betty Buckley) appears bringing his estranged daughter (Ellen Barkin) with her. It’s a low-key, contemplative film directed by Australian Bruce Beresford (“Driving Miss Daisy,” “Breaker Morant”), written by Horton Foote (“To Kill a Mockingbird”), who won an Oscar for his screenplay.

“Tender Mercies” is that rare film that is far, far greater than the sum of its parts—a simple story told simply, its understated performances pitch-perfect for this masterpiece of quietude.

Both “Crazy Heart” and “Tender Mercies” are redemption stories set in the sad, alcohol-soaked world of country music, where the music itself is a character. Bad sings (and lives) that “falling feels like flying for a little while” and Mac keeps reminding himself over and over that no matter how painful he must “face reality.”

Though film as a medium is limited in showing it, simplicity in one’s outer life often leads to richness and complexity in one’s inner life. It’s what Walden is about—going to the woods to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, to learn what it has to teach, and not, when we die, discover that we had not lived.

It’s a big part of why I live where I do (on a lake in a small town) and an even bigger part of why I live the way I do. Without time to think, without space to breathe, without stillness and solitude, we’re like plants in a windowless, smoke-filled office dying without sun and rain and fresh air. Whether we’re confronting alcoholism or existentialism, we, like Bad Brad and Mac, need time and space and love.

Love changes us. It’s the only thing that can. Actually, it’s far more accurate to say that love gives us the opportunity, the environment, in which change can occur. Jean’s love for Bad Blake, Rosa Lee’s love for Mac Sledge, provide a milieu for the men to change—any substantive change they do.

Unconditional love is the greatest gift we can give ourselves and others.

Acceptance.

Being accepted—completely and utterly accepted—just as we are. No judgment. No rejection. No expectations. Nothing but passionate compassion, understanding, appreciation, kindness.

Rosa Lee’s love for Mac is unconditional. She is constant. She is patient. She is giving. Mac experiences God’s tender mercies through her—which is what makes this small, quiet film profound. She gives Mac something Jean isn’t quite able to give Bad. The capacity for love each woman has is different. They are different and have had very different experiences.

Life is suffering—much of it unnecessary and self-inflicted—but, as Mac discovers, being loved, truly loved, makes even tragedy and trauma bearable. Trusting in, resting in, being secure in another’s (and ultimately God’s) love enables us not to survive life, but to experience it with hope and joy.

Mac tells Rosa Lee, “I don’t trust happiness. I never have and I never will,” but despite his claim, and the way his self-destructive decisions have so often caused it to be true, her unconditional love is showing him day by day, moment by moment, he can trust goodness and good things.

And it’s not just washed up, alcoholic country singers who need unconditional love. We all do. Unfortunately, too often when fronted with it, we find it so foreign, so inconceivable, we run from it. Mac jumps in the old pickup truck, buys a bottle, and runs as fast as he can, but something, thankfully, mercifully, brings him back.
What was it that brought him back? The kind, loving, and oh so tender mercies of a good woman (and the God loving him through her).