We had Austin Butler as Elvis Presley, Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse, and most recently, Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, bringing on a new generation of music biopics. Now Jeremy Allen White is set to join the ranks with his role as Bruce Springsteen in this year’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, and may be going from the Emmys to the Oscars. Music biopics have long been a way of garnering award attention, with Rami Malek recently winning an Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody, and Jamie Foxx and Reese Witherspoon won theirs a decade earlier with Ray and Walk the Line, respectively. But more than that, White has the benefit of being in a movie by a director who was able to get the long-time Oscar bridesmaid Jeff Bridges to take home the gold finally. Could director Scott Cooper bring the same charm to Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere that he brought to 2009’s Crazy Heart?
Before Crime Movies, Scott Cooper Made a Music Drama
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere returns Scott Cooper to the type of movie that launched his career. Before The Pale Blue Eye, Black Mass, or Out of the Furnace, Cooper made his writing and directing debut with a much more sensitive kind of film. Crazy Heart follows a country musician on the decline, struggling with alcoholism, who gets one last chance at redemption. Otis “Bad” Blake (Bridges), once a legend mostly playing the hits at bars and bowling alleys, forms a relationship with a younger woman (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and her four-year-old child that inspires him to turn his life around, including reaching out to the new star in country music (Colin Farrell) that he once mentored. The road to recovery isn’t easy for Bad Blake, but the old timer still has music in him, and before the end of the film, he shows he has at least one more great song in him.
Instead of being based on a real musician, Crazy Heart is based on a novel written by Thomas Cobb, yet the music feels authentic. The difficulty of pulling off a music movie with original music is believing the songs are as good as all the characters believe them to be. It’s rare to pull off something as successful as A Star is Born‘s “Shallow,” but Crazy Heart pulls it off. Early on, the musician T-Bone Burnett, who had made an impression on filmmakers with his work on O Brother, Where Art Thou and Cold Mountain, was hired to help develop the voice of Bad Blake. Alongside musician Stephen Bruton and musician and Yellowstone regular Ryan Bingham, Burnett developed music that lived up to Blake’s reputation, not only feeling authentic but going on to win awards itself with the song “The Weary Kind”, taking home both a Grammy and an Oscar. The trio’s music certainly elevates what may have been a routine addiction drama.
Jeff Bridges Made Crazy Heart More than Just an Oscar Play
Jeff Bridges scored an Oscar nomination for his breakthrough role in The Last Picture Show in 1971, and despite three nominations since (Thunderbolt and Lightfoot in 1974, Starman in 1984, and The Contender in 2000), he had never managed to take home the gold. By 2009, hot off the heels of his villainous turn in Iron Man and the ever-growing cult of The Big Lebowski, the time was right to start wondering, “Why hasn’t Jeff Bridges won an Oscar?” Given the comeback narrative of Crazy Heart‘s protagonist, it’s easy to see how the right actor in the right role would be irresistible to the Oscars. Like Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman before him, it all culminated at the right time for Jeff Bridges to win Best Actor. Yet, even with such a tailor-fit narrative for a beloved actor (who has always played music), Crazy Heart ends up being a much better movie because of what Bridges brings to it.
Throughout his career, Bridges has often felt effortless in his performances (one might say he abides), but never lazy, and Crazy Heart is no exception. Bridges brings a lived-in feel to Bad Blake that adds to the authenticity brought by Burnett’s music. What may feel like tropes narratively feels natural to Bridges in this role. The esteemed actor never overplays his drinking, feels comfortable on stage, and brings a level of charm to someone living off of exactly that. It is a performance that is so carefully crafted that it holds the entire film back from slipping into a lackluster melodrama. If Jeremy Allen White can steer the ship as expertly as Jeff Bridges does with Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, Scott Cooper may direct a second actor to a Best Actor Oscar.
Crazy Heart is available to rent on Amazon in the U.S.
