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Robert Duvall won an Oscar playing a drunken singer who sobers up, finds religion, and settles in with a woman (Tess Harper) in a small town in Texas. He's perfect in the part, the movie is a great drama full of lessons learned, interesting story, good script and great acting.

So why is it so BORING?

In many ways, the film is a lot like Duvall--low-key and laconic to a fault. The film is completely believable--and completely forgettable. Nothing about the film is bad, but this is not a story that sticks in the mind, either with me or the rest of the world.

Go looking for it, and you might find it on the "Oscar Winners" shelf at Blockbusters, but you just as likely might not. If they do have a copy, you will almost certainly find it in. When a film is this forgotten in the long run, that's a sign it deserves to be.

Which movie from 1983 would you rather see right this minute--this one or The Right Stuff? Or The Big Chill? Fanny and Alexander? Never Cry Wolf? Or Carlos Saura's incredible flamenco Carmen?

A lot of people use Tender Mercies as an example of the power of simplicity, and of a laid-back style that ends up having high emotional impact. All I got was the laid-back style.

One writer on IMDB compares Tender Mercies to works by Yasujiro Ozu. However, in Ozu's works, incredible effort is made to remove every trace of artifice or "actor" behaviour, and to be as close to real behaviour as possible. That's what gives his works their power. Eventually, you accept what you're seeing more as documentary than as fiction.

Tender Mercies is neither fish nor fowl that way--on the one hand it avoids any overdramatic scenes that would break the realism it's striving for; but on the other hand, you never forget that you're watching a movie. It distances you somehow, even as you admire the work of Duvall and Tess Harper in it.

This film is destined to be obscure; an answer in the Oscar Winners edition of Trivial Pursuit.

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originally posted: 04/09/03 05:24:15
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