Film Journal October 2018

Beach. What’s missing in McEwan’s Children
is Fiona’s private motivation, which could
account (at least in part) for her otherwise
incomprehensible actions.
For example, in the novel it’s clear that
Jack’s proposition is devastating to Fiona not
because she’s wildly in love with him—though
she once was, and the memory is haunting.
His breach, rather, shatters her stability,
identity and sense of place in the world. She
is suddenly forced to question her choices,
including her decision not to have a child. Jack
and Fiona spend many weekends playing host
to his very young nieces and nephews. They
have a designated guest room overflowing
with stuffed animals and other toys.
Fiona is indisputably committed to her
time-consuming, intellectually demanding
career—she’s engrossed by the moral and
ethical legal twists and turns it provides—but
now in the throes of a major crisis she hurls
herself into it with even greater fervor as a
way to focus her attention and block out the
intrusive pain. This connective tissue is missing
from the film. We know Fiona is troubled, but
that’s about it. Her behavior doesn’t add up.
Her most recent case centers on a
17-year-old leukemia patient whose parents,
committed to the teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses,
forbid the hospital from administering
blood transfusions that (in conjunction with
chemotherapy) would save their son’s life.
Transfused blood is viewed as unclean and a
violation of God’s will. The doctors present
their case; the parents (convincingly played
by Ben Chaplin and Eileen Walsh) present
theirs, insisting that their son fully shares their
religious convictions.
Fiona decides to visit the young boy in
question, Adam Henry (Fionn Whitehead
of Dunkirk), lying in a hospital bed, to see
how he feels about all of it, knowing it’s an
unprecedented step on her part (in fact,
virtually inconceivable). As it turns out,
Adam is a bright, charming, even flirtatious
youngster who spars with the judge on judicial
and religious matters, making it clear he is not
being coerced by his parents or the church
elders. He impresses Fiona with his sharp
intelligence and artistic sensibility, especially
his love of poetry and music. Guitar in hand,
he strums away while the two of them sing
a duet, “Down by the Salley Gardens,” a
sentimental folk song with a poem by Yeats.
Nurses and social workers silently observe
the performance. This moment rendered me
slack-jawed.
As expected (no spoiler here), Fiona rules
on the side of the doctors. Adam receives his
treatments, including the transfusions, and
recovers. It’s a transforming experience for
him. He’s thrilled to be alive and looking forward
to his future. He’s beginning to question
his faith. He’s also fallen in love with Fiona.
After all, she’s given him new life, literally and
metaphorically. In all probability she’s the first
woman who has expressed any interest in him.
He writes, calls and trails after her, at one
point traveling from London to Newcastle,
where she’s attending a legal gathering. Finally,
he suggests moving in with her as a non-paying
lodger who will earn his keep by doing chores
around the house.
She knows she’s aroused feelings in him
that she had no business arousing. In the novel
there is some reciprocity of feeling and that
makes for a more complex—yes, emotionally
compelling—scenario. Onscreen she’s dismissive,
even cruel. Adam is still an inexperienced
child and she has unwittingly exploited him.
Painful consequences follow.
The climactic scene takes place during
a Christmas concert in which Fiona is
performing. Throughout much of the film,
she rehearses the program with her friend
(Anthony Calf), a High Court barrister. Music
plays a central role in this film, and that works
well. Less successful is the melodrama that has
been concocted to take place at the aforementioned
recital. Fiona receives bad news
before the performance, struggles through
most of it and finally has a public meltdown.
It’s just plain false. This is a steely, private British
woman. It would never happen.
That said, Thompson cuts a highly
intelligent, empowered figure whose silent
moments are evocative of thoughts unvoiced.
Whitehead as a young boy on the cusp of
adulthood struggling with God, mortality and
overactive hormones is impactful, too. And
in a small supporting role, Tucci is as much a
witless sad sack as he is a bastard.
The acting is not the problem. It rarely is.
And, within parameters, the movie is not dull.
Just don’t expect to feel much short of guilt in
response to your own apathy.
—Simi Horwitz
BLAZE
SUNDANCE SELECTS/Color/2.35/127 Mins./Rated R
Cast: Benjamin Dickey, Alia Shawkat, Josh Hamilton,
Charlie Sexton.
Directed by Ethan Hawke.
Screenplay: Ethan Hawke, Sybil Rosen, based on Rosen’s
memoir Living in the Woods in a Tree: Remembering
Blaze Foley.
Produced by Jake Seal, Ethan Hawke, John Sloss,
Ryan Hawke.
Executive producers: Louis Black, Sandy Boone,
Gurpreet Chandhoke, Stephen Shea.
Director of photography: Steve Cosens.
Production designer: Thomas Hayek.
Editor: Jason Gourson.
Music: Blaze Foley, Townes Van Zandt.
Costume designer: Lee Kyle.
An Under the Influence production.
An unconventional reimagining of a
country-music legend’s career from writerdirector
Ethan Hawke
Languid, associative, at times dragging, at
other moments deeply affecting, thanks to a
song and a trick of the light, Ethan Hawke’s
Blaze is difficult to define. It’s based on the
life of country singer Blaze Foley, so should
we call it a biopic? But Blaze lacks your standard
cradle-to-the-grave scope; instead, the
movie, directed and co-written (with the late
Blaze’s former wife, Sybil Rosen) by Hawke,
interweaves three different time periods
to paint a portrait of an artist that’s more
impressionistic than comprehensive. And yet
the movie isn’t nearly abstract enough to be
called a “tone poem.” Almost as singular as it
claims its subject once was, then, what Blaze
does offer is an experience fueled by the
undeniable strength of the real Blaze Foley’s
country-folk music.
We are given to know our hero through
flashbacks and flash-forwards: as he was in his
relationship with the aspiring actress, Sybil
(Alia Shawkat); on the long night before he
met his tragic death; and through the narrative
recollections of fellow musicians and friends
Townes (Charlie Sexton) and Zee (Josh
Hamilton), as they give a radio interview an
unrevealed amount of time after Blaze’s death.
Blaze is a gentle giant, hippy troubadour,
romantic, great talent and—that unfortunate
aspect of his character that gives his onscreen
story its dramatic weight—a self-destructive
mess. We see him falling in love in 1970s
Georgia with the intelligent Sybil and living
an Edenic life with her in a tree house in the
woods. We see him, too, brawling in bars and
drunkenly abusing hecklers across the Midwest.
And we see him—we hear him, above all
else—sing through every high and every low.
The un-billed star of Blaze, the reason you
stick with the story despite its relative lack of
action and its time-jumping (which takes some
getting used to), is the music. Impressive,
too, are the handful of great performances
given in service to those songs—think of the
actors in this film as the equivalent of backup
singers to Blaze’s tunes—most notably from
Sexton as Townes, who brings such ease to
his dialogue you’d think he was improvising on
the spot, and Ben Dickey (who, like Sexton,
is a musician off-screen as well) as Blaze. The
latter is sometimes difficult to understand,
with his Southern accent and his lyrical-jive
way of talking. At times, when he’s whispering
with Sybil in bed, he sounds not unlike a
Dixie “Godfather.” But, having never heard
any of the originals he covers, I found after a
while I ceased to mind how difficult it was to
understand Dickey when he spoke; I was only
waiting for him to sing again.
Although the screenwriting plays second
fiddle to the songwriting here, there are a few
noteworthy moments of humor that enliven
the longer stretches without a song. Townes
and Blaze are given to telling jawing anecdotes
that are like short, comic stories unto themselves.
(Perhaps unsurprising, coming from
author Hawke.) Yes, they reveal things about
the characters who tell them, but do these interludes
also make the two-hour-plus film longer
than it needs to be? Maybe. Possibly. Yes.
But Blaze is not an economical movie when it
comes to its storytelling, and the color these
drawling anecdotes brings is so vivid, their
length—that is, the length of the film in its
entirety, really—must be given a pass.
OCTOBER 2018 / FILMJOURNAL.COM 67
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9/6/18 11:39 AM