I Saw the Light (2016) * *

Directed by:  Marc Abraham

Starring:  Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Olsen, Bradley Whitford, Cherry Jones

I had the feeling when watching I Saw the Light that I came in during the middle of the story.    Good biopics allow you to feel you understand its subject's motivations and hungers.     We never really get to know Hank Williams (Hiddleston) despite a strong Tom Hiddleston performance.     There are throwaway lines referencing his childhood, but we don't truly get the full picture of the iconic singer/songwriter who died in the back seat of a car on January 1, 1953 at age 29.     Like the subject of many singer biopics, Williams struggled with alcohol and drugs throughout his adult life.    Partly because he was afflicted with Spina bifida, and partly because his life seemed destined to be cut short.    

I couldn't help but compare I Saw the Light to Walk the Line (2005), the superior Johnny Cash biopic.    Cash, like Williams, was a famous country singer who saw crossover fame.     Cash's life and career lasted a lot longer.    Walk the Line provides us with reasons why he was driven to succeed and destroy himself in the process.     His father would openly say things like, "The wrong son died".     This filled Cash with a burning desire to prove the old man wrong, but the alcohol and drugs tempered any satisfaction.     I Saw the Light only makes us guess as to what drove Williams.     Hiddleston's stage performances show Williams singing in his trademark voice with a big hat and a bigger smile.    The movie focuses more on Williams' upside down personal life, which involved two marriages, broken homes, and erratic behavior.     This is the first musical biopic where the concert performances seem dropped in just so we can be reminded why we are watching a film about its subject.

Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen, who plays his first wife Audrey in a convincing performance, did their own singing.     Their musical abilities pass muster.      We never see the process of Williams writing songs or his inspiration to write them.     We only see him performing them or recording them with relative ease after all the hard work was done.     The movie hurries past this so we can see him drink some more and make life miserable for himself and everyone around him.     I think of The Buddy Holly Story (1978), which took its time to show us the process of Holly's songwriting and musicianship.    We came away feeling that he would still have been a force in the music business even if he stopped performing.    A plane crash left us only with speculation as to what might have been, but we sensed his passion for music.  

By the end of his life, Williams had spun totally out of control.    He had a heart condition (perhaps unbeknownst to him) that was exacerbated by drug and alcohol abuse.     He was divorced from Audrey, knocked up another girl, and then settled down to marry another one just a few months before he died.     He developed a bad reputation for being unreliable since showing up at shows drunk become commonplace.     However, there is nothing here we haven't seen before in other biopics.    This doesn't feel like Williams' story, but the story of someone kind of like him.     It doesn't feel unique to him.  

Hiddleston and the other actors do their mightiest to bring us some understanding of Williams and the people who loved him and suffered with him.    Hiddleston has the look of Williams and is up to carrying the heavy load on his thin frame.     Olsen creates a portrait of a strong-willed woman who took a lot from Williams, but clearly draws a line in the sand as to how much more she will take.   She would only be pushed around so much.    I couldn't help but be reminded of June Carter.     I suppose it's not a great thing when a movie consistently reminds me of better ones covering the same ground.