2.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and brief nudity
By Derrick Bang
During a remarkably prolific
career, Hank Williams released 35 singles that reached the Top 10 in
Billboard’s Country/Western best-sellers chart, 11 of which hit the coveted No.
1 spot. Many of the latter — among them “Lovesick Blues,” “Hey, Good Lookin’ ” and
“Jambalaya (On the Bayou)” — continue to be covered, to this day, by new pop
and country artists.
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| Hank Williams (Tom Hiddleston) indulgently allows his wife Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen) to join him at the microphone, during one of their live shows on radio station WSFA ... while the members of his backing band, the Drifting Cowboys, try not to wince. |
All the more remarkable,
considering that Williams’ recording career was so brief. To paraphrase an old
chestnut, when Williams was as old as Mozart, when the latter died at age 35,
he (Williams) had been dead for six years.
Writer/director Marc Abraham’s
biographical drama focuses exclusively on William’s professional career, from shortly
before his first recording session, to the substance abuse and weak heart that
claimed his life at age 29. But despite being based on the respected 1994
biography by Colin Escott, George Merritt and William MacEwen, Abraham’s film
is a maddeningly superficial affair that devotes far too much time to Williams’
alcoholism and his prickly, on again/off again relationship with Audrey Mae Sheppard,
at the expense of conveying even the slightest sense of the singer/songwriter’s
creative spark.
Although I Saw the Light is laden with Williams’ songs — performed with
impressive faithfulness by star Tom Hiddleston, who sings every note — they all
arrive whole and complete, as if God simply dropped them, fully formed, into
Williams’ head. We see no scribbled lyrics and crossed-out rhyme schemes; no
late-night experimentation with guitar chords; no real-life incidents that
bring a smile to Hank’s lips, and prompt him to sit down and pen a tune.
That’s simply nonsense.
By dropping us abruptly into the
rising, post-WWII arc of Williams’ career, we also get no sense of back-story:
the boy who took guitar lessons from Alabama blues musician Rufus Payne, and
how that shaped what followed; the kid who was isolated from his peers because
of spina bifida, which left him unusually gaunt. Abrahams opens his film with
Hank’s marriage to Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen), thereby bypassing all sorts of
essential details that would explain why she and his mother Lillie (Cherry
Jones) despise each other so much.
Granted, the broad strokes are
obvious: Both women want to control Hank’s career. But that alone isn’t enough
to justify the obvious contempt Lillie shows for Audrey, and we’re left to
wonder what went down before this
movie begins.
Mostly, though, Abrahams gives us
a thoroughly unflattering portrait of Williams, played to insolent,
short-tempered and highly unstable perfection by Hiddleston. He’s an excellent
actor, easily able to project the charisma with which Williams could light up a
stage. But the unflattering emphasis on Williams’ flaws frequently feels like
character assassination.
