Tender Mercies

In a newly released letter, J.D. Salinger writes to a friend, "Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid." That is a notion that Tender Mercies, but not its low-rent cousin, Crazy Heart, takes to heart. The latter impresses in isolation but shrinks to near nothingness when when compared side-by-side with the 1983 film, written by Horton Foote and directed by Bruce Beresford. In Tender Mercies the drunken ex-singer quits drinking and marries a good woman with a young son. We never see how he quits; his wife says he just stopped, but not without falling off the wagon a few times. Crazy Heart inflicts the viewer with 12-step mush. In Crazy Heart there are repellent scenes of drunken, sloppy sex; in Tender Mercies there is one kiss between the man and woman -- one -- that is more powerful than anything said or done in the other film. Crazy Heart gives us a mumbling Colin Farrell; Tender Mercies has Betty Buckley in a superb performance and singing like an angel. Tender Mercies is not perfect; a couple scenes are more corny than genuine. But in its reticence, gentleness, and dignity, it towers above its coarse and blowsy cousin.