BeatRoute Magazine ON Edition - October 2019

Screen Time
THE BOSS
OF THE BIG
SCREEN
New Bruce Springsten
concert doc Western
Stars brings the late-career
album masterpiece
to the screen By PAT MULLEN
I
n a year full of nostalgic Baby
Boomer music docs, it’s a joy
to watch a legend like Bruce
Springsteen reinvent himself.
Western Stars, which opens this
month after debuting at TIFF in
September, brings the Boss’s album
of the same name to the big screen.
This concert doc bears the soul of its
creator.
Western Stars, the album, is a
late-career masterpiece for Springsteen
that enlivens his abilities as a
storyteller with the heart and soul of
country music. It’s an elegiac collection
full of metaphors of open roads,
cowboy boots, and heartaches. The
music of Western Stars is tailor-made
for the movies with its rich imagery
and country twang that pulls at heartstrings
without hitting false notes.
Western Stars, the film, features
the lone concert of the album,
which Springsteen performed in his
100-year-old barn. Accompanied by a
30-piece orchestra and his wife Patti
Scialfa, Springsteen plays the album
for his closest friends. The result is
a front row ticket to the most intimate
Springsteen show one could
see.
The songs play out in full with
Springsteen reflecting on the music
between tracks. These interviews
and monologues evoke a musician’s
asides performed between songs at
a concert. Instead of simply standing
there and talking as the band
catches its breath, Springsteen
moves away from the stage, outside
the barn, and into the Wild
West. Images evoke the movies of
John Ford with Springsteen’s tales
of cowboys and rugged roads. The
staging of the candid moments is
intermittently cheesy, like a shot of
Springsteen in his old truck as he
talks to the camera with a grin that
says, “Howdy, partner!” but they’re
fair reflections of a life well lived.
These interludes provide intimate
glimpses into Springsteen’s life as
home movies reveal moments with
Patti and their kids as Springsteen
savours the journey that’s brought
him to the creative crossroads of
Western Stars.
Springsteen unpacks the significance
of the songs while reflecting
on his life that’s gone by, noting
how the role of the car has changed
but that the open road remains a
songwriter’s strongest metaphor
for freedom. His reflections on bygone
Hollywood stars whose cowboy
boots have been laid to rest makes
the performance of the film’s title
track extra poignant. Here is Springsteen
stripped and vulnerable. At 70,
he knows it’s a blessing to don his
boots at the beginning of a new day.
Watching Springsteen confront his
age and put his fears of loneliness
and legacy into song, the film becomes
as moving as it is entertaining.
The buy-it-the-minute-you-hear-it
soundtrack is fuller and richer than
the album. The sweeping orchestration
widens the scope of the music
and lends it extra gravity as the
notes reverberate in the acoustics of
Springsteen’s hallowed barn, a warmly
inviting setting for the concert.
The film is lushly shot and mixed
beautifully to let the music take advantage
of the theatrical experience.
Pulling double-duty as performer
and director, working with long-time
collaborator Thom Zimny, Springsteen
proves himself a boss on both
sides of the camera. Springsteen
looks forward when many stars of
his generation have their eyes in
the rear-view mirror. Western Stars
speaks to Springsteen’s reinvention
as an artist as he conquers another
frontier.
Western Stars hits theatres
October 25.
A Star Reborn
In Judy, Renée Zellweger delivers a noteperfect
performance as Judy Garland
By PAT MULLEN
T
he
forecast for 2020 predicts the gayest Oscars
yet. After Taron Egerton wowed us as Elton John in
Rocketman, Renée Zellweger delivers a note-perfect
performance as Judy Garland in Judy. Wager
good money on the stars taking home matching
Oscars for portraying these queer icons.
Judy is Zellweger’s comeback. After being the “it girl”
of the early 2000s with hits like Bridget Jones’s Diary,
Chicago, and Cold Mountain, Zellweger’s stock vanished.
Star persona and performance blur in this portrait of an
actor struggling to understand her purpose when the spotlight’s
gone. Zellweger is heartbreakingly good in realizing
Garland’s vulnerability.
Judy focuses on the final year of Garland’s life. At 46,
roughly Zellweger’s age during her slump, Garland is off
to London for a string of concerts. Broke, blacklisted,
and fighting a custody battle, Garland is at rock bottom
offering show-stopping numbers one night and drunken
embarrassments the next.
Flashbacks to Garland’s work on The Wizard of Oz,
toiling under the tyrannical and controlling producer Louis
B. Mayer, the film portrays Garland as a woman who was
never allowed to control her own life. But where Garland’s
pain was overcome by alcoholism and drug abuse, Zellweger
channels her agony and loneliness into life-saving,
transformative art.
Using her trademark pouty lips and sad, shimmering
eyes, Zellweger doesn’t disappear within the character.
While her resemblance to Garland is uncanny, this is very
much a Renée Zellweger performance. It pays tribute to an
icon while reminding us of another’s worth.
It’s not all pain and heartache, though. Judy rings with
the joie de vivre that continues to endear Garland to audiences.
Zellweger performs Garland’s signature tunes in
knockout numbers. Recording all the songs live, Zellweger’s
vocals capture Garland at her highest and lowest. A
star is reborn with Zellweger’s career-best performance
in Judy.
Judy is playing in select theatres now.
30 BEATROUTE OCTOBER 2019