Blaze

2018 musical biopic

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A look at a not-so-famous country artist and his life, his love, and his unfortunately short career.

Musical biopics ain't my thing, but if you throw in Townes Van Zandt as a character, my interest will be piqued. That guy very well might be on my own personal musical Mount Rushmore along with the three other sure things. He's at least one of a rotating fourth. I can thank Larry and Lyle Lovett for that because I didn't really know who he was I was way too old to be finding out who Townes Van Zandt was.

Blaze Foley would not have been nowhere near my musical Mount Rushmore because one requirement to be memorialized in my mind's stone is that I need to know you exist. Like most people--even folks who like country music way more than me--Blaze Foley is relatively unknown. Knowing that Townes Van Zandt was a champion of Foley's work piqued my interest, and I was very happy to find out that Van Zandt himself was an important character in this biopic.

My favorite moment might be one of the snippets of a radio interview between Van Zandt and a DJ played by Ethan Hawke who directed this thing because starring in a great movie and another pretty good one wasn't enough for him in 2018. Townes tells a story that involves grave robbing and a pawn shop loan slip that was just about the best thing I've ever heard. Charlie Sexton gives an earthy performance as Van Zandt. His story doesn't distract from Blaze's story, but he's an integral character, and it was great to see him.

As you might expect, there's a lot of music here, and some of the best moments are Van Zandt's. There's one great song he gets where the characters are bathed in this yellow light and lens flare, giving the whole scene an almost magically realistic look. It's beautiful, and there's another touching moment where Blaze brings himself into a performance by his friend that was downright touching. Blaze is played by Ben Dickey, and as a professional musician, he brings a legitimacy to the live performances. If this was Elvis or Chuck Berry or Johnny Cash, the viewer would come in with certain expectations. I'm not sure if Dickey's Blaze is spot-on or not or if he's creating a character who is only almost Blaze and not quite Blaze. It doesn't matter because his musical performances get to a certain depth and help round out this character.

Dickey is really good. There are a lot of good moments, some that would even fall into your typical biopic trappings. You buy him as a musician, and you buy him as a storyteller. You buy him as this giant gregarious bear of a man with troubles burbling beneath his fur. You buy him as a romantic soul and as a sometimes-angry man and as a self-destructive drunk. You buy this guy as a folksy philosopher with these wells of wisdom that you wish he would draw from. Blaze is a character you root for despite his flaws and maybe even because of his flaws. You recognize the genius, identify with the demons, and are attracted to this magnetic personality. Dickey hits a range of emotions in creating this figure who should have been a limping icon.

Hawke's storytelling is disjointed, and for the better part of the movie, I couldn't figure out why that was necessary. In a way, it matches the structure of a live show with Blaze doing some songs, going off on wild tangents, taking time to engage in fisticuffs with a punk who's talking on the phone of this dive serving as a venue a little too loudly, and then getting back to what is normally expected in a live show. Clinking bottles and inebriated chatter add flavor just like little detours in Blaze's life narrative. This narrative bounces around between that radio interview with Van Zandt and Blaze's posthumous influence, the live show recorded just a day before his death, and all of the little episodes that make up his climb to anonymity.

The last one-fourth, from the part right around where his wife is gone until the end, is a little more draining because the character goes to some pretty comically dark places that you wish he wouldn't. And there's a death scene in this--not a spoiler since it's given away right off the bat--that is probably a little longer than it needs to be. I thought it was more effective when it was just a suggestion, a sickening sound that we could identify anyway. I didn't need to see Dickey suffering to know that Blaze Foley had a sad and painful death.

Something in this might give another recent pick for "Song of the Year" a challenge.