Delayed Reaction: Blaze

Premise: A look at the life of influential country musician Blaze Foley.

 

The best thing about Blaze is that director Ethan Hawke has a lot of reverence for Blaze Foley. The film shoots him in the kindest light while never shying away from the roughest aspects of him. Even his drunkenness is romanticized in a way. There's a lot of affection in the movie. Ben Dickey plays Blaze like an amalgamation of stories told about him by others. The film is shot like that too. The film moves through his life in chapters, like most music biopics, but they don't feel like a checklist of key events. It's more like someone asked a bunch of his friends for stories of him then attempted to arrange them in a timeline. And that seems appropriate, given that, as far as I can tell, Blaze Foley mostly exists in legend at this point.

 

I knew nothing about Blaze Foley before this movie. He died in 1989 without a song of his ever charting. It's darkly funny how much of his music was lost because someone stole the masters or accidentally threw them away. Because music fans are nothing if not obsessive, there are some recordings of his now, but not that many. He never broke big, even in death. And that is probably my biggest issue with the movie. I remain unconvinced that his story is worth telling. He strikes me as another self-destructive alcoholic 'genius' who was given more second chances than he probably deserved. While characters throughout the movie talk about how influential he was and how great a songwriter he was, I still don't see it. Sure, I know "influence" is a nebulous term. It's not his fault that no one ever used one of his songs to make a chart-topping hit, but it would've been nice to have one point in the movie where I thought, "oh, that song was his?" Fair or not, music biopics are normally rated by how well they sell the audience on the music. Bohemian Rhapsody succeeded because the world just really loves Queen's music. Straight Outta Compton gives context to really appreciate that album. Yesterday only did moderately well because, while people love the Beatles, the movie sort of attributes the music to someone else.  Blaze doesn't really convince me that Blaze Foley is a musician worth caring about. So, even though Ben Dickey, Alia Shawkat, and others give really lovely performances, I never quite buy into the subject of the film.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend