Sydney ’16: I Saw The Light review: Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen headline the biopic based on the short life of the legendary country singer Hank Williams.
Writer, director and producer Marc Abraham brings the story of Hank Williams to the screen in our second music biopic in about as many weeks following Don Cheadle’s impressive, attitude laced Miles Davis piece Miles Ahead back in April. It’s very much a different tempo with Abraham’s picture, with British actor Tom Hiddleston bravely taking on the role of Williams, a country artist who is regarded as one of the most significant and influential American singers and songwriters of the 20th century.
Sourced from the book ‘Hank Williams: The Biography‘ by Colin Escott, George Merritt, and William MacEwen, I Saw The Light focusses on the professional and personal life of Williams from his early twenties, all of the way up to his untimely death at the age of just 29 in 1953.
The superb Hiddleston effortlessly embodies his role with passion, energy and an immense singing talent that we never saw coming. Add on an equally impressive performance by fellow member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Elizabeth Olsen, and you have an on-screen musical teaming that is up there with the likes of Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in their awards-laden turns in the superb Johnny Cash biopic Walk The Line. Sadly, that’s where the comparisons end, as I Saw The Light pails in comparison.
Unfortunately, the interesting, though very short life of the legendary Williams’ life is largely painted as quite the opposite, and while the two leads’ performances are virtually flawless (the fact that Hiddleston is in his mid-thirties is not an issue either), both characters come across as loathsome as one another, and the viewer struggles to have any emotional involvement with either. On the one hand you have the alcoholic, womaniser in Williams, and then his equally unsympathetic wife, Audrey. The film is over-long (clocking in at over two hours), and drags in a number of places throughout. That said, the many musical interludes scattered within do peak interest when they pop up, and Dante Spinotti‘s wonderful cinematography make the film simply stunning to look at.
We must reiterate, this film is not an absolute disaster, and Abraham’s second directorial effort is a fairly decent take on largely uncatalogued life. A few snips here and there, and a reduction in running time of at least twenty minutes, may benefit I Saw The Light’s overall feel, because, as it stands, the film, in a very ironic way, is the complete opposite of the subject matter it is trying to portray. It’s involving, though ultimately lacks focus with the end result being quite unremarkable.
I Saw The Light review by Paul Heath, May 2016.
I Saw The Light is now available on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK.
