Tender Mercies
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
There have been many memorable films about country and western singers. Crazy Heart with Jeff Bridges. Coal Miner’s Daughter with Sissy Spacek. The little-known Pay Day with Rip Torn. And this gem: 1983’s Tender Mercies, starring Robert Duvall.
Duvall stars as Mac Sledge, an alcoholic, has-been country and western singer-songwriter who wakes up one morning on the floor of a ramshackle Texas motel, hung over after a whiskey-fueled fight. Broke, he convinces the motel’s owner Rosa Lee—played by actress Tess Harper—to let him do some chores to work off what he owes her.
It’s a desolate place in the middle of nowhere. The barren Texas landscape looms in every direction. Rosa Lee lives there with her young son. She’s a widow. Before long, Mac is living at the place too, making repairs and pumping gas for any customers who stop by. He gives up drinking. Starts writing songs again. Though he’s never been baptized, he starts going with the family to church. One day he and Rosa Lee decide to get married.
Just as Mac’s old life starts to feel like a distant memory to him, he hears that his ex-wife, a popular country singer played by Betty Buckley, is performing nearby. He ends up going to the show, not to see her perform, but hoping instead to see his daughter, played by a very young Ellen Barkin. Because of the divorce, Mac has been blocked from having any contact with his daughter. But now he hopes that maybe he can begin to heal that wound as well.
The beauty of Tender Mercies is its grace and simplicity. It avoids any false notes of dramatic contrivance and lets us follow along as Mac attempts to start over and right wrongs.
Tender Mercies has the intimate pulse of ordinary life being lived by ordinary people.
Written by the great playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote, and Directed by Bruce Beresford, Tender Mercies is a wonder of quiet understatement. It has the intimate pulse of ordinary life being lived by ordinary people. Rather than being told or shown everything that happens, we are given just enough to feel the truth of what’s going on. In every way the movie shines with easy, down-to-earth, storytelling magic.
Horton Foote deservedly won the Oscar that year for his brilliant screenplay, as did Robert Duvall for his masterful performance as Mac Sledge. With every look, nuance and gesture, Duvall vividly brings to life the meaning of the words “tender mercies.” A phrase taken from the Bible, “tender mercies” means to put tender feelings such as compassion and loving kindness into words and actions. For Mac Sledge there is no greater proof of tender mercy than for him to leave behind the man he was and find a way to be born again.
Tender Mercies is a great American film! Worthy of four out of four stars for sure.
