'Crazy' about Bridges

Jeff Bridges has never won an Oscar, but that's only proof of what a good actor he is.

I don't know that there's ever been a Hollywood actor less interested in playing to the camera, or more indifferent to whatever audience might exist beyond it.

Most actors, certainly most stars, at some point reveal the volcanic ego that brought them to Hollywood, but Bridges, whose presence on movie sets was a birthright, seems no more impressed by the camera than he is by the catering truck.

So his work on screen is uncommonly subtle, effortless, modest, designed not to impress but to last - it was probably a full decade, for instance, before people conceded he'd given the best performance of 1998 ("The Big Lebowski").

Bridges is having more luck, recognition-wise, this year with "Crazy Heart," his memorable, mellow variation on a timeless movie type, the burned-out country singer poised between disaster and redemption.

There's something about the form of (good) country music that lends itself to this kind of narrative - country is one of the few genres that still speaks to mature adults, and so is one place to go for songs about failure, regret, loss and other by-products of mid-life.

Bridges plays a failure named Bad Blake, a haggard (pun intended) fellow with several ex-wives, a drinking problem, and a great many open dates on his tour book. His only assets are a reliable beat-up truck and fantastic songbook of original tunes. The music for "Crazy Heart," assembled by T-Bone Burnett, is first rate, and that's crucial to building credibility for the steadfast devotion that Blake still finds in the small venues he plays throught the southwest.

There are shades of Bridges' anti-star persona in "Crazy Heart," the true artist whose integrity keeps him from chasing the limelight, while showier sidemen rise to fame. A subplot has Blake resisting, then accepting, help from former band-mate Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), leading to a very nice scene of reconciliation between the two men, and an equally nice concert sequence.

The meat of the narrative, though, has Blake falling for a young music journalist (Maggie Gyllenhaal), then insinuating himself into her single-mom life. We see Blake muster the charm that led him to five wives, and display the recklessness that caused him to lose them.

"Crazy Heart" and writer-director Scott Cooper have earned some criticism for the movie's small scope, for taking "laid back" a little too far, for being too familiar. (It greatly resembles "Tender Mercies," and even features Robert Duvall).

In some ways, though, I preferred "Crazy Heart" to "Tender Mercies," which goosed its narrative with a tragedy pulled from nowhere.

I admire Cooper's restraint, an attribute I've admired in Bridges for so many years.