[rating=7.00]
Whereas most musicians’ biopics tend to focus on well-loved, or at least well-known artist, co-writer director Ethan Hawke has aimed for something different with his latest film, Blaze. Telling the story of troubled troubadour Blaze Foley (Ben Dickey), and his short — albeit resonating — career during his time in Austin, Texas.
Screening appropriately at SXSW, Hawke told me prior to the screening that he was aiming to tell not only a story that was known to just a handful of people, but about Blaze Foley as a person, whose life is mostly known for being associated with Townes Van Zandt, played here by longtime Austin fixture Charlie Sexton.
The film’s structured around a couple of principle timelines, including Blaze’s life, his marriage to the love of his life, Rosen (Alia Shawkat), and his troubled rise to relative anonymity in the Austin music scene, and an on-air interview with Townes, where he recalls his time with Foley to a faceless radio DJ. Though it has the potential to result in a scattered, hard-to-follow formula, Hawke manages to keep the story not only streamlined, but accessible. It lets us into the world that Blaze Foley occupied, a towering man with a simple vocabulary and a limp thanks to a childhood bout with polio.
Despite the warts-and-all portrayal, particularly when it comes to his temper brought about by excessive drinking, Hawke lets Foley come off as a sympathetic character. Not quite a musical visionary, but a man who had no delusions about who he was, and whose honesty informed his songs. It’s that kind of raw emotion that would later be picked up by the likes of John Prine, Willie Nelson, and Merle Haggard, who all covered Blaze’s songs, gifting them to audiences he himself would never live to see.
It’s because of this raw, honest portrayal that Hawke manages to craft Blaze a truly beautiful film. One that, like its subject, is endearing despite his bouts of being truly unlikeable. On that note, it does tend to linger and limp around a bit too long, ultimately ending on a ‘too clever by a half’ moment that seems like it was forcing itself to illustrate one of Foley’s own lyrical anecdotes.
Regardless, a star-making performance by Dickey, along with the always-captivating Shawkat anchoring the film’s emotional center, it’s not quite like any musician biopic that’s come before. Add to that Sexton’s captivating performance as Van Zandt, and cameos by Steve Zahn, Sam Rockwell, and frequent Hawke collaborator Richard Linklater as oil barrens on a get-rich-quick scheme, Blaze is a film overflowing with rich characters and real, earnest heart.
