Cinema: Heart of Texas

TENDER MERCIES

Directed by Bruce Beresford

Screenplay by Horton Foote

“Hey, mister,” asks the fat lady on the in dusty Texas sidewalk, “were you really Mac Sledge?” Mac (Robert Duvall) squints and says, “Yes, I guess I was.” A successful country songwriter is what he was, and the husband of a high-octane singer named Dixie (Betty Buckley), till a nasty temper and too much liquor drove him out of Dixie’s limelight. Now he is trying to find a modest parcel of dignity for himself, his new wife Rosa Lee (Tess Harper) and her boy Sonny (Allan Hubbard). But it’s hard: “I’m missin’ the music. I may not be any good any more, but that doesn’t keep me from missin’ it.”

Horton Foote’s lovely screenplay finds its pace and meaning in the slow, plaintive tempo of rural Texas life. Mac teaches Sonny a few guitar chords; he sashays through a honkytonk dance with Rosa Lee; he gets dunked in the christening tub at the local Baptist church; he tries to make peace with his rebellious daughter (Ellen Barkin); he visits Dixie’s Tara-size mansion to say an elegy over a dead marriage; he tosses a football around with Sonny. Attuned to the movie’s rhythm, the viewer will see wounds heal, friendships ripen, a bond sealed between the film makers and the audience.

Bruce Beresford, the Australian director making his American film debut, is no subtle stylist. His tendency is to run like hell with a single visual strategy: flossy soft focus in The Getting of Wisdom, low-angled shots for the heroes and villains of Breaker Morant, hyperactive camerabatics to catch the footballers in The Club, and, to emphasize the lonely helplessness of Mac and his kind, a series of longshot landscapes that dwarf the actors. But with his jeweler’s eye for casting and a fond patience with his actors, he allows every performance in Tender Mercies to shine through the visual clichés like the home truth in a country ballad.

He is especially lucky to have Duvall as his star. Duvall’s aging face, a road map of dead ends and dry gulches, can accommodate rage or innocence or any ironic shade in between. As Mac he avoids both melodrama and condescension, finding climaxes in each small step toward rehabilitation, each new responsibility shouldered. With a lot of help from his friends, Duvall makes Tender Mercies the best American movie of the new year.

—By Richard Corliss