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The Champion, Thursday, April 7-13, 2016
LIFESTYLE
Page 11 B
I Saw the light peers into Hank Williams’ demons
by Lindsey Bahr
(AP) The final scene of / Saw
the Light, a biopic about folk
legend Hank Williams, shows
a packed theater on New Year’s
Day in 1953. They’re waiting for
Hank to come out, but instead
get a plainly distraught and
uncomfortable man tasked with
delivering a message he doesn’t
want to: That Hank Williams, at
the age of only 29, died on the
way to the concert.
As the camera peers out
into the crowd a song starts
to emerge-/ Saw the Light.
Everyone in the theater, on
stage and off, joins in. They
know the words as well as they
know their own name.
Hank Williams belonged to
the people, and that’s made
clear in this perfectly realized
moment. But it’s the first time
the movie even attempts to
show Williams’ impact outside of
himself and make the audience
understand why this man and his
voice endures to this day and it
comes far too late.
For most of the film, which
writer-director Marc Abraham
adapted from authors Colin
Escott, George Merritt and
William MacEwen’s biography,
the fans are just numbers.
They are records sold, listeners
banked and uninteresting faces
in the crowd.
This is a naval-gazing biopic
of the highest order, and not
a particularly illuminating one
either. It’s mostly about Hank,
played by Tom Hiddleston, and
his women. It trudges through
the personal and professional
highs and lows of his rise
to fame as though it were a
greatest hits record.
And for all the information
we get about his tumultuous
relationship with his first wife
Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen),
his drinking, his drugging, his
cheating, and his success it
still feels fairly slight and by the
books. Even the retro, gauzy
cinematography from the great
Dante Spinotti makes the whole
experience bothering.
Biopics can be thankless
heartbreakers for the actors
brave enough to take them
on, especially when it involves
mimicking an iconic voice.
Hiddleston, while seemingly too
old in his mid-30s to play the
young Hank, does a fine job in
capturing the ghostly golden
god, whose expressive eyes
can go from tender to menacing
in a flash. He’s got his gangly
swagger down, too, and at least
a workable approximation of that
haunting voice.
But despite the minutiae and
the long runtime, Hank Williams
the artist never comes alive on
screen. Even the career high
of finally making it to the Grand
Ole Opry lands with a thud.
Was Williams that consistently
tortured? Did he save all his
charm for the stage? Did he
really believe that his fans loved
him because he suffered for
them, as he drunkenly tells a
reporter in one scene?
/ Saw the Light can’t seem
to decide, or even conjecture
on any of those points. Nor are
we given any insight into how
the turmoil in his life turned
into songs. In one scene
he’s fighting, in the next he’s
singing Your Cheatin’ Heart.
Juxtaposition only goes so
far, and it’s not enough here.
Abraham just presents moments
and moves on.
A biopic should be more
interested in what made Hank
Williams extraordinary, not just
the things that made him like
everyone else. We never feel
what he feels when he goes
from a fight to a ballad. Here, he
might as well be flipping through
a Hank Williams songbook that
he’s completely disconnected
from. That’s why the final scene
works so well. It finally makes
you feel a connection between
the man, the song, the audience
and the historical context that
made him.
Great movies, like great
songs, illustrate the ineffable.
This is a movie that had too
much to tell and not enough to
say.
/ Saw the Light, a Sony
Pictures Classics release, is
rated R by the Motion Picture
Association of America for
“language and brief sexuality/
nudity.” Running time: 123
minutes. Two stars out of four.