Hearts Beat Loud: The healing power of music

Hearts Beat Loud (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and much too harshly, for fleeting profanity and mild drug references
By Derrick Bang

Unexpected little charmers, such as this one, are the reason I love this job.

The core premise has been can’t-miss ever since Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney made the immortal suggestion — “Hey, kids; let’s put on a show!” — back in 1939’s Babes in Arms.

Whatever else might be happening in their lives, Frank (Nick Offerman) and his daughter
Sam (Kiersey Clemons) always experience joy when making music together

The format shifted a bit over time, these days generally attaching itself to gentle relationship dramas, where a shared love of music paves the way toward love, reconciliation and/or inner peace. Recent examples include director John Carney’s delightful trio: Sing Street (2016), Begin Again (2013) and the incomparable Once (2007).

Director/co-scripter Brett Haley’s Hearts Beat Loud definitely belongs in their company.

Haley has quietly been building an indie career characterized by unabashedly sentimental dramas such as I’ll See You in My Dreams and The Hero: gentle little films no doubt mocked by condescending viewers who sprinkle cynicism on their breakfast cornflakes, but which are adored by those of us seeking relief from lowest-common-denominator Hollywood bombast.

Haley makes films about people: folks you might know, and certainly would like to know. And if they happen to have an artistic streak, well, that just makes them more interesting.

Frank Fisher (Nick Offerman) owns a one-man record store in Red Hook, Brooklyn: a relic more than a generation out of date, whose shelves are lined solely with vinyl. Customers are a long-vanished species; the shop is approaching the final few seconds of the last track on Side B. Frank has just informed his landlady, Leslie (Toni Collette), that he’s packing it in.

The decision kills him, because music has long been in his blood. He met his wife while both performed in clubs: She sang, he played backup. She’s years deceased, under tragic circumstances that Haley and Marc Basch’s script reveals cleverly, subtly, delicately.

Their daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons) is the second apple of Frank’s eye: an ambitious, hard-working student with plans for medical school. She has thus far spent the waning days of her final summer, before college, cracking the books in an effort to get a head start in what she knows will be a highly competitive environment.

It’s a double loss for Frank: his shop and his daughter.

I'll See You in My Dreams: Thoughtful character portrait

I'll See You in My Dreams (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG-13, for drug use and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang

Sometimes what seems like a comfortable rut actually is a slow slide into prolonged depression, at which point an unexpected crisis — or two — can transform unconfronted anxieties into utter despair.

Once beyond the initial awkwardness of their disparate ages, Carol (Blythe Danner) and
Lloyd (Martin Starr) discover that they genuinely enjoy chatting, and sharing little intimacies.
The question, moving forward, is where this relationship might go.

That’s the subject of director Brett Haley’s sweet, gentle drama, which draws its strength from a subtle and deeply layered performance by Blythe Danner. She stars as Carol Petersen, a comfortably retired single woman who — if asked —would insist that she has made peace with the unexpected loss of a beloved husband, some 20 years earlier.

After all, Carol’s life is filled with activity, much of it revolving around gardening, golf and boisterous bridge games — not much bridge actually being played — with longtime gal pals Rona (Mary Kay Place), Sally (Rhea Perlman) and Georgina (June Squibb). Carol’s schedule is disciplined to a reasonable degree, from the 6 a.m. wake-up buzz of her alarm clock, to a bit of television before lights out somewhere around 11 p.m. each evening.

But Carol hasn’t actually been alone; she has come to depend upon the constant presence of her beloved dog, Hazel. And therein lies the potential for emotional collapse.

After deftly establishing the parameters of Carol’s routine, Haley and co-scripter Marc Basch open their narrative with a gut-wrenching sequence. Hazel clearly is old, and so we’re not surprised by what occurs ... but animal lovers will have considerable difficulty surviving the subsequent scene in a veterinarian’s office, as Carol bids goodbye to her longtime companion.

Danner plays the scene so persuasively that I wondered if it could be genuine, the actress huskily trying to maintain composure while confronting the need to “do the kind thing” for an actual devoted pet. The scene feels that genuine, as anybody who has been there can attest.

And, suddenly, all the scheduled activities that have structured Carol’s life, for so long, have lost their luster. She’s hard-pressed to identify the actual problem, and at this point — this early in the film — she may not even be consciously aware that her fragility is rising.

Haley’s film is less a conventional drama, with strong plot points, and more a thoughtful tone poem: an often painfully intimate opportunity for us, as viewers, to confront our own perceived stability. The verisimilitude is strong. Danner’s Carol could be the vibrant and cheerful neighbor next door: the one with whom we exchange pleasant greetings, but rarely probe further. In a way, Haley and Basch quietly suggest that there’s much to be gained from getting to know such folks better, because we’re all — each of us — worth knowing better.