[rating=7.00]
The line between “competently okay” and “god awful” is thinner, and far more nebulous, than most people realize. There are levels of nuance that must be considered for a film that walks the tightrope between pretty good and actually terrible, and as with any tightrope act, the slightest breeze can send the movie tumbling in one direction or the other. I Saw the Light, the new Hank Williams biopic from writer/director Marc Abraham, is a film that walks that line and walks it admirably.
After a disastrous run of the festival circuit last year, where the film received such scathing reviews that its release was pushed back in order to remove it from awards consideration, I had anticipated that I Saw the Light would fall flatly into awful, and tempered my expectations appropriately. Perhaps that’s the key to enjoying the movie. While the movie does little to match the kind of frenzied originality that its subject matter brought unto the world, it is, by no means, as terrible as early reviews might have left you anticipating.
Which isn’t to say that it’s a particularly amazing film. No, I Saw the Light is merely a decent film. Its biggest sin is its unremarkability. It’s hardly the disaster that other critics might have you believe, but nor does it give its subject the kind of depth it deserves. Perhaps that alone is enough to turn you away, and I certainly wouldn’t blame you for that, but, at its core, I Saw the Light tells the story (well, a story) of Hank Williams in a competent, and totally watchable, manner.
The unremarkable nature of the film stems mostly from the angle from which it approaches ol’ Hank. Like many biopics—music biopics, especially—the movie chooses to unfold in familiar ways. Boy marries girl (Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen, playing Hank and his first wife, Audrey), boy finds success, success leads to excess—of drugs, of drink, of women—girl divorces boy, boy stumbles depressingly, boy eventually dies.
It’s sort of the tried and true formula for biopics, and given the rate at which Hollywood had previously praised films that follow this outline, I don’t know that I necessarily fault Abraham for following it. It’s a somewhat disappointing take on the life of Hank Williams—who did so much in his mere 29 years—but, for what it is, it’s a decently made film that never drags.
While there’s an argument to be made that a Williams biopic deserves more than the standard Hollywood treatment—and, to be sure, I don’t disagree—rather than waste time on what could’ve been, I prefer, instead, to focus on what we’ve been given. Certainly, there are better angles to take in making a movie about the life of Hank Williams. He was a character rich in story, whose brief, six-year career caused ripples that still effect the world of country music to this day. Choosing to frame his story as a tragic love story between him and his first wife may be wholly and completely uninspired, but that doesn’t necessarily make it awful.
This a movie driven solely by the strength of its cast, and its cast is strong. Hiddleston and Olsen are completely immersed in their characters, each of them bringing the flawed beauty of their subjects to life in awe-inspiring ways. The drama between the two is played up, in typically Hollywood fashion, but their tumultuous young love is ripe for cinematic hyperbole, and the spirt of their tale remains faithfully intact.
The script is where I Saw the Light is most at risk of faltering. While the dialogue is, for the most part, well-written, the movie’s structure is so formulaic that you can almost call the scene you’re about to see before you see it. This is arguably due more to the genre than the movie itself. Biopics have largely gotten stale in the last year, thanks to the precedents set by Ray and Walk the Line a decade ago. There’s also a kind of narrative choppiness that runs throughout the film. Thematic threads are scant, and often the movie feels like a picaresque recounting, moving from one scene to the next with little tying it all together.
Perhaps that was the point. Hank Williams certainly fits the mold for picaresque adventurer, a sort of modern Candide on a troubadour’s journey. Looked at from here, the narrative decisions work and tell the story of Hank Williams in an admirable, if unmemorable, way.
While Ol’ Hank may not have done it this-a way, I Saw the Light is never awful. In fact, it’s pretty good, lacking in depth though it may be. Perhaps one day we’ll get the Hank Williams movie that so desperately wants to be told—his life is filled with the kind of anecdotes that beg to be seen on the screen—but this isn’t a bad start. It’s a faithful telling of the life and times of Hank Williams that, if nothing else, should whet your appetite for more Hank Williams. To my mind, that’s never a bad thing.
I Saw the Light is now playing in theaters everywhere.
