There's poverty and then there's poverty. The worst of it is in the urban areas east of the Mississippi and in Appalachia. One look at that cataclysmic dilapidation is enough to make the stoutest heart sink. Poverty in the rural South, though we often hear about it, has a comfortable quality. One coexists with the pigs lolling in the barnyard. California doesn't know the meaning of genuine visual despair. Every time they try to make a movie about poor people in Los Angeles, they fail because the settings come out looking like some middle-class area in East St. Louis.
But Appalachia looks like what it is, or what it used to be. The shacks are genuine crumbling shacks. The mud is gray and sandy, and the weather usually cold and drizzling. Howard Hawks' "Sergeant York" showed us Gobbler's Knob, Tennessee, or whatever it was called, under the blue skies and warm sun of Hollywood's back lots.
Not here. You can understand immediately why Tommy Lee Jones, condemned to the coal mines, is dying to get out before he dies of lung disease like so many other miners. He marries the virginal Loretta and deflowers her brusquely in a motel room so shabby that it might be encountered in nightmares.
As a husband, Jones isn't a terrible guy. After all, he bought her her first guitar. He's just a bad guy -- anxious for her success before, and jealous of it afterward, batting Loretta around, conducting adulterous affairs. The movie more or less follows the usual pattern, a triumph now and then, interrupted by the occasional tragedy. The exploitative male is now as formulaic a figure as the femme fatale.
I haven't been much of a fan of country and western music since adolescence but remember fondly the kick-ass energy of Hank Snow. Lately, I've heard a few real musicians among the ranks, Buck Owens and Willie Nelson, but mostly the artists achieve about the same level of musical proficiency as the amateurs in "Nashville," who wrote their own songs for the movie. You could do it too.
What made Loretta Lynn's songs different -- her voice was undistinguished -- was its contemporary content. I wouldn't say she was to country music what the Beatles were to pop rock, but, after all, a song with a title like "Don't Come Home From A-Drinkin' With Lovin' On Your Mind" must resonate with modern women in a way that, say, "Git Along Little Doggies" does not. One of her songs was about being widowed by the draft during the Vietnam war; another was about "the pill." That's pushing the envelope, considering the intended audience.
In the lead role, Sissy Spacek, un-made-up, unglossed, unglamorized, passes for fourteen years old without any trouble. She's a pleasant and cheerful woman too, and cute, and she provided me with surprisingly professional support in the unfailingly dull "Crimes of the Heart" -- a thin story made bearable only by my own magnificent performance. Tommy Lee Jones as the philandering husband who drinks too much is his usual jumpy, sinewy self. He's a subtle actor and has fine control, but it's the sort of role enactment that doesn't bring all that many awards.
But Appalachia looks like what it is, or what it used to be. The shacks are genuine crumbling shacks. The mud is gray and sandy, and the weather usually cold and drizzling. Howard Hawks' "Sergeant York" showed us Gobbler's Knob, Tennessee, or whatever it was called, under the blue skies and warm sun of Hollywood's back lots.
Not here. You can understand immediately why Tommy Lee Jones, condemned to the coal mines, is dying to get out before he dies of lung disease like so many other miners. He marries the virginal Loretta and deflowers her brusquely in a motel room so shabby that it might be encountered in nightmares.
As a husband, Jones isn't a terrible guy. After all, he bought her her first guitar. He's just a bad guy -- anxious for her success before, and jealous of it afterward, batting Loretta around, conducting adulterous affairs. The movie more or less follows the usual pattern, a triumph now and then, interrupted by the occasional tragedy. The exploitative male is now as formulaic a figure as the femme fatale.
I haven't been much of a fan of country and western music since adolescence but remember fondly the kick-ass energy of Hank Snow. Lately, I've heard a few real musicians among the ranks, Buck Owens and Willie Nelson, but mostly the artists achieve about the same level of musical proficiency as the amateurs in "Nashville," who wrote their own songs for the movie. You could do it too.
What made Loretta Lynn's songs different -- her voice was undistinguished -- was its contemporary content. I wouldn't say she was to country music what the Beatles were to pop rock, but, after all, a song with a title like "Don't Come Home From A-Drinkin' With Lovin' On Your Mind" must resonate with modern women in a way that, say, "Git Along Little Doggies" does not. One of her songs was about being widowed by the draft during the Vietnam war; another was about "the pill." That's pushing the envelope, considering the intended audience.
In the lead role, Sissy Spacek, un-made-up, unglossed, unglamorized, passes for fourteen years old without any trouble. She's a pleasant and cheerful woman too, and cute, and she provided me with surprisingly professional support in the unfailingly dull "Crimes of the Heart" -- a thin story made bearable only by my own magnificent performance. Tommy Lee Jones as the philandering husband who drinks too much is his usual jumpy, sinewy self. He's a subtle actor and has fine control, but it's the sort of role enactment that doesn't bring all that many awards.