sl7lg25
This is a movie that should be in the Smithsonian. It's a profound reflection of a time period that produced some of the best American music ever. I was very surprised to read at the end of the film that Hank Williams was only 29 when he died and that he had written over 700 songs many of them classic. I was born in '48 so he was not of my generation but after the 60's rock and roll died I came to appreciate the greats of the past like Hank and Bill Monroe. I think Sneezy Waters did an incredible job of acting. The writing was right on target for humor and the soulful journey that Williams must have experienced. He seems to be searching for a peace that eludes him. I didn't know he had written "I saw the light", which he sings here.
futurethot
This movie takes you far away from the abstract "cat's whisker" sound of the Hank Williams of your youth. It lays an opera of humanity around his songs. It's the songs, the stories, the hypnotic weaving of emotion, but most of all, it's the way the fans were shot. They were real, everyday, unadorned people with all of their own foibles yet the camera catches their private moments of brilliance, an occasional graceful twirl on the dance floor, their unbounded exuberance and glimpses of their facial waves of enthusiasm. The camera shows us the impact of the yarn of music that Hank spins. You can listen and you can watch and you can feel and you can do all of those things and the enjoyment just piles up.
Thomas E. Reed
I saw this about a decade ago, at Christmas, on HBO. I don't follow country music, but I knew of Williams from my sister. The story is almost a "Twilight Zone" tale; even as Williams, dying in his alcoholic haze, imagined an ideal concert, his fantasy is plagued by the demons that haunted his real life. The demons include the casual racism of country music of that time (although black music and country were intertwined), the celebrity-hungry fan who wants to seduce a famous person, and (as I recall) the basic despair of the audience, who have no other way to spend Christmas than to go to a bar and get drunk. The end of the fantasy, with Williams's haunting song about being deserted even by God, was devastating. I knew country music was nearly always sad, but I never thought it could approach existential despair. An unforgettable character portrait.
pekka.hallikainen
I saw this film on the Finnish TV in the late 1980´s and haven´t seen it since. Sneezy Waters don´t look much like Hank Williams, but when the film was over, I almost believed, that I had seen Hank himself acting and singing (and not just play back). The story begins as Hank sleeps in the back seat of his Cadillac on the way to Canton, Ohio, and dreams of a gig that would be perfect for the audience and for himself. That dream reflects his severe problems in real life. Sadly, that gig never came true. Hank died that night, on New Year´s Eve 1953. This little film is a beautiful tribute to the Late Great Hank Williams.
AD
