USA,
1982, 89 min
Shown in 1983
CREDITS
- dir
-
Bruce Beresford
- prod
-
Philip S. Hobel, Mary Ann Hobel
- scr
-
Horton Foote
- cam
-
Russell Boyd
- editor
-
William Anderson
- cast
-
Robert Duvall, Tess Harper, Alan Hubbard, Betty Buckley, Ellen Barkin
Topnotch Australian director Bruce Beresford (Breaker Morant, Don’s Party, The Club) succeeds in remaining thoroughly Australian in his first U.S.-produced film yet manages to evoke a fully convincing American outback milieu. With Tender Mercies, moreover, he becomes the first of his countrymen to venture successfully outside of his native soil and may well have created his finest film to date in the process. The starkly simple story, with a barren Texas prairie setting that might be Australia, concerns a down-and-out ex-country-and-western singer on the skids since the breakup of his marriage, and the subsequent recovery of his strength. Horton Foote’s subtle screenplay avoids the obvious course of dealing with his musical and spiritual comeback, focusing instead on his relationship with his former wife, his daughter, his new bride and her son. Tender Mercies, in its understanding and gaunt style, touches upon a number of themes with admirable clarity; small-town life, loneliness, country music, marriage, divorce and parental love, At the heart of the film, of course, is Robert Duvall’s totally right personification of the over-the-hill singer who finds new affirmation. Yet, in what has come to be expected as a Beresford trademark, Tender Mercies glows with the sensitively tuned performances of its outstanding supporting cast.
—Mel Novikoff
FACTOID #27
A surrealist stop-motion animator, the Czech Jan Svankmajer, was the first recipient of the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award in 1997. The POV Award honors the lifetime achievement of a filmmaker who works outside of feature-length narrative filmmaking.
