The name of Blaze Foley is not well known to most, but the singer-songwriter (born Michael David Fuller) was an unsung hero of the Outlaw Country movement of the 1970s and ‘80s. Ethan Hawke’s Blaze, based on the 2008 memoir Living in the Woods in a Tree by Foley’s widow Sybil Rosen, offers an impressionistic look at the life and career of Foley, who is here played by musician Ben Dickey as a gentle bear of a man who can quickly become violent. The film interweaves the events of the last day of his life in 1989 with commentary on his legacy from his friend and sometime collaborator Townes Van Zandt (played by musician Charlie Sexton), as well as the story of his love affair with Sybil (Alia Shawkat)—who he met at an artist’s commune in Georgia—and the arc of his career, which falters as he becomes alcoholic and violent. Hawke has compassion for the man but is unblinking in his portrait of Foley’s self-destructive behavior, and while the interviews with Van Zandt (Hawke himself plays the interviewer) spin Foley into a veritable legend, the naturalistic scenes of his life defy the myth to reveal a talented man who becomes his own worst enemy. Hawke takes an unconventional approach to the artist bio-pic genre, but while the film’s rambling rhythm may frustrate some viewers, the complicated portrait that emerges is rewarding. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)
Blaze
Shout! Factory, 129 min., R, DVD: $16.99, Blu-ray: $22.99 Volume 34, Issue 5
Blaze
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