Butler's Cinema Scene

Tom Hiddleston as Hank Williams

“I SAW THE LIGHT” My rating: C-

123 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The Hank Williams songbook runs deep and rich, which makes the shallow ineffectiveness of “I Saw the Light” all that much more dispiriting.

Williams, of course, was the country/western genius who in the late ’40s and early ’50s produced some of popular music’s most lasting tunes (“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Cold Cold Heart,” “Hey Good Lookin’,” “Lovesick Blues,” “Jambalaya,” “I Can’t Help It,” “Move It On Over,” Kaw-Liga”) then succumbed to drugs and alcohol, dying at age 29 in the back seat of a limousine on New Year’s Day 1953.

The story has been told cinematically once before, in “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” with Coppertone poster boy George Hamilton in the lead role. That 1964 release remains the best screen treatment of Williams’ life and music.

Going in, my hopes were high for “I Saw the Light.”

I was looking forward to seeing what Brit actor Tom Hiddleston (a scene stealer as the evil Loki in the “Thor”/Marvel franchises) could bring to the role of  an iconic American country artist.

And there was hope behind the camera as well, inasmuch as writer/director Marc Abraham had helmed the solid 2008 biopic “Flash of Genius” (about the inventor of the variable-speed windshield wiper, who sued the Detroit carmakers over patent infringement) and produced films ranging from “The Commitments” to “Dawn of the Dead” and “Children of Men.”

Well, “I Saw the Light” gets the music right, though there’s not near as much of it as there could have been.

But as drama this one is dead in the water.

The major issue here is Abraham’s lack of a coherent vision. What story is he telling here? He throws around a lot of ideas but never settles on one that can carry the weight of a two-hour-plus feature film.

Elizabeth Olsen, Tom Hiddleston

The first hour is devoted to Hank’s rise to prominence and his uneasy marriage to Audrey Williams (Elizabeth Olsen), who desperately wanted to carve her own country singing career but lacked the voice or creativity. The situation isn’t improved by the looming presence of Hank’s mama (Cherry Jones), the sort of doting hen who will never encounter a woman good enough for her boy.

Always a drinker and a womanizer, Hank gets addicted to drugs after suffering a debilitating back injury. His live performances start going to hell. He divorces, remarries, and continues cheating.

The end.

Give Hiddleston credit for capturing Williams’ rawboned, lanky physical presence. And his singing voice is an acceptable simulacrum of Hank’s instantly recognizable style.

But there’s no inner life here, a fatal situation that is as much the fault of writer Abraham as it is Hiddleston’s. Is it possible that all those great songs were written by an essentially shallow person? This Hank [The Hank we encounter here] is almost totally lacking in self analysis. “I write what I write and I sing what I sing” is as close as he gets to examining his creativity.

Nor is the film an effective recreation of a place and time. Similarly themed films — “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “Sweet Dreams” “Walk the Line” — felt like time machines that captured the ethos, the sights and sounds and attitudes of the American South. “I Saw the Light” feels superficial and cursory.

Well, at least there’s Hank’s tunes, recreated by music producer Rodney Crowell. These, at least, feel authentic.

| Robert W. Butler