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Coal Miner's Daughter (22-Feb-1980)
Director: Michael Apted Keywords: Drama, Musical
REVIEWS Review by anonymous (posted on 5-Feb-2007) This wonderful movie changed my life, and left me a devoted Loretta Lynn fan. Sissy Spacek plays a tough role. In 1980 Loretta Lynn was a well known entertainer, with a unique personality. Achieving accuracy without caricature was a fine line, and Sissy certainly earned her Best Actress Oscar with her success. Tommy Lee Jones played an equally tough role. Mooney Lynn was no saint, and another really unique character. Tommy played him so sympathetically, without making him flawless. The filmography is specatcular. You feel you could be in rural Kentucky watching very poor people as we see a young Loretta stumble into decisions with her heart that carry her, first away from her coal mining village and then into music fame. You feel the tiredness of a rolling tour bus, the repetition of shows on the road, even Loretta's vague feelings of being dislocated on her infrequent visits to her own mansion. The costumes, the pace of the movie, the display of emotional events without schmaltz all make this movie spectacular. Even more, a biopic comes off not as an ego-centric vanity profile. We see the real people dealing with the consequences of fame. Now in 2007, it's harder than ever for ordinary people to image the pain, loneliness, and frustrations of a very successful entertainer. The celebrity mill presents glamour and wealth and personal scandals without letting us see the real people under the artificial legends and acclaim. The movie can only be faulted lightly for what it does not show. Loretta Lynn is - must be - a tough businesswoman and a workaholic to have achieved what she did, especially as a woman in the 1960s and 1970s. Conway Twitty was a huge business partner who helped explode Loretta Lynn's career into full country mega-stardom. Their duets were huge successes, giving each of them many new fans. He doesn't exist in the movie. Norm Burley and Owen Bradley and the Wilburn Brothers (who put Loretta on TV week after week) each had a huge hand in Loretta's success, and they don't exist in the movie. "The Pill" was a song about birth control that brought controversy but also showed Loretta's steely independence. Second only to Coal Miner's Daughter, this song showcases the Loretta Lynn legend, and her incredible pathbreaking in American music. In the movie the song never happened. Loretta had six kids, and much guilt at being a show biz Mom who missed so much of their lives. The kids are each two dimensional props in the context of this film. Still, this movie is an astonishing success. People who hate country music can love this movie. So American, with a dirt-poor peasant girl from the mountains spinning spunk and a pretty voice and an amazing songwriting talent into a music career that will be remembered for decades to come. Sissy Spacek singing all the songs herself - no lip-synching - is a final enduring innovation of this movie. This lets Sissy fully live the role in a very convincing way. There is no break between the character and the performances. You can feel the full power of the Loretta Lynn legend, because by the time Sissy is done re-enacting this powerful woman's life, you feel like you know Loretta far beyond an album cover or even the sweet (if overly sanitized) Loretta Lynn biography.
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