Some films show their characters like onions being peeled off, layer after layer after layer. ‘Tender Mercies’ is looks at the life of a washed up country singer, who is closer to the end of his life than the beginning. As he begins to find a semblance of stability, following a failed career, broken marriage and an estranged offspring, he reflects on his life and wonders at what he should be grateful for.The story is written more like a day in the life of experience, rather than with a standard beginning, conflict and closure structure. Mac Sledge is a man who finds himself in a motel on a Texas highway, hung over and unsure of his future. Being penniless he works for the woman who runs the motel, a young widow with a son and slowly begins to let go of his alcohol addiction.
He marries her and plays father to her boy and in the process tries to make peace with his ex-wife and teenage daughter, whom he has not seen in years. His musical career also takes a bit of a U-turn when a local band that grew up on this music, asks him to cut a record for him. Just as he is beginning to trust what’s happening to him, tragedy strikes again.
Bruce Beresford’s direction gives us as close a glimpse of reality on film as we can hope to see. The film has long periods of silence against a plain backdrop of the Texan farm lands. He doesn’t rely on close-ups of actors to capture their expressions, but allows them to live the character in the natural setting. Horton Foote’s screenplay has a key role to play in this approach, which won him the Best Original Screenplay Oscar. The journey that Mac takes is subtly intertwined with the journey that the young mother and son take, as the child begins to ask her more questions about his real father who died in Vietnam, while he begins to see Mac fill those shoes.
One particular scene that stands out is when Mac’s wife, looking at his anger over his song being rejected and the spurn from his ex-wife, tells him that we should be grateful to God for the tender mercies that he showers on us from time to time. Coming to Mac from a woman, who was married at 17, had a child at 18 and was widowed at 19, the scene is brilliantly shot.
The film stands on the capable shoulders of Robert Duvall, in his Oscar winning role. This is one of the finest examples of method acting, of living the character that you can hope to see. He sings his songs himself and plays the acoustic guitar like a pro. When he stands in the backyard of his house, overlooking acres and acres of farmland, reflecting on why certain things happened to him, you want to believe him and in many ways, makes you reflect on your own life. He is ably supported by Tess Harper who plays his wife.
'Tender Mercies' is a reflective movie. You need to be in the mood for it.