Back in March, I was finally rewarded for being one of six straight males nationwide who voluntarily watch the Academy Awards: Jeff Bridges, one of my favorite actors, took home the award for Best Actor for his role in 2009’s Crazy Heart (directed by rookie Scott Cooper). Unfortunately, since I hadn’t yet managed to catch the film in theaters, I had to trust the Academy’s judgment. Having finally seen the film, I’m now in a position to agree.
There are many reasons to be a fan of Jeff Bridges. He’s been in the acting business for decades, deftly handling a staggering range of roles. Recently, Bridges has played villain Obadiah Stane in Iron Man, new-age warrior Bill Django in The Men Who Stare at Goats, and businessman Charles Howard in Seabiscuit. Most of this generation, however, probably best remembers Bridges as The Dude, the iconic protagonist of 1998’s The Big Lebowski.
Yet despite a prodigious list of memorable roles and four Academy Award previous nominations, it took Bridges’ performance in Crazy Heart to win him the Oscar—and for good reason. Bridges plays Bad Blake, a washed-up, burned out cross between Merle Haggard and Waylon Jennings, minus the success and recognition those musicians have enjoyed.
In his day, Blake was a legend; today, he has been eclipsed by the likes of Tommy Sweet (played by Colin Farrell, who ably projects the modern rock-star country persona). Blake drives himself from dive bar to bowling alley in a weathered old Chevy Suburban to play one-night engagements in front of the AARP-age crowds that form the last remnants of his fan base. He’s a broke, overweight, chain-smoking alcoholic with nowhere to go but down—basically everything I hope to be in forty years.
To a fair number of us, Bridges will always be The Dude. But his performance as Bad Blake is exceptional for its subtlety. Early in the film, Blake rushes off a humble bowling alley stage during the middle of a song to puke his guts out outside (having consumed a bit too much whiskey), then gets back up on stage and finishes the song.
There are a million reasons to find this sequence of events comical. But it wasn’t. In fact, for me at least, it was pretty close to soul crushing. With any luck, I’ll never hit a point that low over the course of my life. But thanks to Bridges, I was able to feel like I was there, if only for a moment. That’s the mark of a great performance, even if it doesn’t jump off the screen at you.
Of course, the pain just makes the eventual redemption more satisfying. Yes, “redemption” is an overused word, and there’s a good measure of it in Crazy Heart. But it doesn’t come cheap. Blake’s romance with younger reporter Jean Craddock (a perpetually alien-looking Maggie Gyllenhaal) is train wreck-like for its inevitability, so we in the audience might as well sit back and enjoy the destruction.
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