Film review: ‘I Saw the Light'

Hank Williams said of country music - of his music - “It’s sincere. A man sings a sad song, he knows it’s sad.” In “I Saw the Light,” Tom Hiddleston - a nice actor who’s convinced as everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Loki - is sincere in his effort, but he is not, for a moment, Hank Williams.

The film’s obvious antecedent is “Walk the Line” and, of course, Joaquin Phoenix doesn’t sound that much like Johnny Cash, either - but his gruffness convinced. While Hiddleston has some of the sadness of the man, he lacks the keening urgency of Williams’ voice.

In many ways, director Marc Abraham defies the biopic formula - we don’t see Hank’s first studio demo, we don’t see him fall for his first wife, Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen), and we don’t see his death by heart failure in the back of a powder-blue Cadillac somewhere in West Virginia. And, although he does present Williams’ debut at the Grand Old Opry, he captures none of the scale of that cradle of country music. Imagine a film about Babe Ruth’s Bronx Bombers if Yankee Stadium were only seen from the clubhouse.

As the film wears on, Olsen regrettably recedes from view - as country and western first wives so often do. Cinematographer Dante Spinotti does well to capture the extra surface area of her eyes as they catch the light and absorb Hank’s excuses. When she grills him about whether he can be faithful and he replies, “I can try.” Would that that lame line had failed! Poor Audrey would have saved herself some heartache and saved all of our ears from the music of Hank Williams Jr.

The film is ponderous fragments when it should be speeding narrative - what was it like to be booked 100 out of 119 nights across the South? How can a morphine, amphetamine and alcohol addict also bang out 35 top-ten singles in six years? His creative process is reduced to one shot of scribbles in an open notebook, then another of newsprint touting his latest chart-topper.

In fairness, the film shows in exacting detail how awful Hank’s clothing choices were throughout his career. The earnest and occasionally affecting script - there’s a fun scene where Hank indicates that both Audrey’s stew and her singing require a little ketchup to be palatable - has a few anachronistic slip-ups. One doubts the manager of the Mecca of Nashville really said, “The Opry is a brand” in 1952. Though, if Hank’s “Hey girl” come-on to his future wife actually happened, that’s a delightful nod to Ryan Gosling’s latter-day catchphrase.

At his best, Hank Williams made music so harsh it verged on unpleasant. “Your Cheating Heart” crawls through the radio and into your body. The song is powerful, whether you’ve cheated or not - and the first four, unmistakable notes of it have more urgency than anything in two hours of “I Saw the Light.”

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“I Saw the Light” is showing at the Sonoma 9 Cinemas. Rated R. Running time 2:01. Visit cinemawest.com.