MOVIE REVIEW-Tender Mercies (1983)

Robert Duvall is an actor who is very religious. And he said that his dream was to compose and sing a country song in the southern United States himself, and to play the role of a Protestant revival pastor someday. After all, he did a great job portraying a Pentecostal pastor in 1997's The Apostle, and 15 years before that, in 1983's Tender Mercies , he played a singer named Mac Sledge, who fell from a decades-long career as a top-notch country singer to an alcoholic. For his dazzling performance, he and the film won the Academy Awards for Best Actor and Original Screenplay respectively the following year.

The film was directed by Albert Horton Foote Jr. (March 14, 1916 – March 4, 2009) based on screenplay. In this case, he wrote another masterpiece (both a book and a movie), The Trip to Bountiful (1962 & 1985), and he wrote a screenplay of the old classic 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird . He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1995 and won two Academy Awards: one for an original screenplay (Tender Mercies) and one for adapted screenplay (To Kill a Mockingbird) . In the case of Foote's books and screenplays, they contain a Protestant message, but they are portrayed as if they were flowing gently without being exposed to the front . As it should be, reading his story gives me the feeling that the good news will naturally permeate my life.

The story goes like this - Mac Sledge, whose alcohol addiction has caused him to lose his fame as one of the most famous country singers, divorce his former singer, and lose his 18-year-old daughter to the point of being unable to see her. After being forgotten by people, he flows into a town in Texas, and tries to survive to make a living.

Meanwhile, Rosa Lee, a young widow who lost her husband in the Vietnam War and raised a young son Sonny, works at a gas station for $2 an hour and room and board. This young widow, a devout Baptist, changes Mac's life little by little, breaks a long hiatus and starts singing again, gradually regaining her former fame, getting baptized and giving up drinking, and even with her ill-fated daughter. relationship is restored. The video below is a scene where he sang the song "If you hold the ladder" he made for his recovery at a bar. After that, the song became very popular, and he went back to a job that seemed impossible as a singer.

Baby, you're the only dream,
I've ever had come true
There's so much more to reach for,
thanks to you
Now I can climb this mountain, babe,
there was a time I'd stop
If you'll just hold the ladder, baby,
I'll climb to the top

If you'll just stand beside me all the way
I'll do all the things
that didn't matter yesterday
And I'll be everything
this man can be before I stop
If you'll just hold the ladder, baby,
I'll climb to the top

Unfortunately, his daughter, who is barely recovering from her relationship, is killed in a car accident. He lives with the same wreckage as himself, but Mac shakes when his kind daughter dies like that. He makes up his mind after attending his daughter's funeral, and at the end of the film, he says to his now wife, Rosa Lee, who works in a garden near a gas station and looks at him calmly:

Mac: There was one time when I almost died in a car accident. Drunk, my car overturned by the side of the road four times. Got me out of the wrecked car and I'm alive Last night I was praying and trying to find out why... Why then I was alive and my daughter was dead... But I didn't hear my prayers answered. I do not know. There is no answer to prayer...
Rosa Lee: ....
Mac: I don't even know why a Texas drunkard like me roamed this place. And you accept me, sympathize with me, help me, hold me right, marry me... Why? Why could that happen? Is there a reason why that happens? Sonny's dad dies in a war, my daughter dies in a car accident, why?
Mac: I don't believe in happiness. I never did and never will.

The monologue of CS Lewis seems to be in line with this line. It's also a very deep film. In the scene that immediately leads to the final scene of the movie, Sonny and Mac are having fun playing football, and Rosa Lee looking at it, the scene ends peacefully. As if to announce the new beginning of a new family.

It was an Academy Award-winning film.

This movie is a masterpiece that should be recommended. Otherwise, it would be a sin for me.