I Saw the Light

Last fall there was some award buzz surrounding the performance of Tom Hiddleston in "I See The Light," the Hank Williams biopic that premiered at the Toronto Film Festival prior to its scheduled November release. Then the movie was pushed back to March, scuttling any chance for Hiddleston to be in the Best Actor sweepstakes. He has a chance this year, but it won't be likely to go anywhere. Who remembers film performances from the first part of the year when considering awards at the end of it? Aren't they usually culled from the fall releases?

This is a pity for Hiddleston, who gives a more than capable performance in the film, which is written and directed by Marc Abraham (adapted from the book "Hank Williams: The Biography" by Colin Escott with George Merritt and William Macewen). Now, if only Abraham were able to tell Williams' story in a less pedestrian way. "I See the Light" offers an intermittently entertaining overview of the singer's stormy, brief life: He died at the age of 29 in 1953, in part due to alcohol abuse. His premature death came as such a shock that when it was announced at a concert that he had passed, the audience laughed incredulously. That untimely death helped create a legend of the laconic cowboy best known for writing and performing "I Am So Lonesome I Could Cry."

Over his short career Williams' rockabilly sound made him a country sensation: He had 33 hits, of which eight went to #1 on the Billboard charts. A good number of them, including "Hey Good Lookin'," "Jambalaya," "Lovesick Blues" and "Cold, Cold Heart," are well-represented here and, to his credit, Hiddleston does his own singing, not so much offering an imitation of Williams' distinctive style, but giving it his own spin. The musical performances are the film's strong points - it is the telling of the story that makes the movie such a chore to sit through.

This is unfortunate, because the sad-eyed Hiddleston, the British actor best-known for playing Loki in the "Thor" series, embodies the troubled singer with quiet intensity, giving a performance that gets stronger as Williams self-destructs from a mix of alcohol and prescription pain killers. (He suffered from spina bifida.) Much of the film follows his tortured relationship with his first wife Audrey (a terrific Elizabeth Olsen), whom he pretty much marries on a whim in a gas station in 1944. She's also a not-so-great singer and pushes herself on Williams and his band, much to their chagrin, which leads to much tension in their marriage.

To his credit, writer/director Abraham doesn't sugar-coat Williams, who was a bit cold, ambitious and a victim of many demons, including womanizing and booze. But his telling of the singer's life falls victim of the cliches of the music biopic genre. There's never an attempt to portray any of the joy Williams had in writing music and singing - he's more driven than inspired, and his story becomes more a dull dirge than a bittersweet portrayal of a talent whose premature death robbed American music of a unique, poetic voice.