1980: "Coal Miner's Daughter"

                           Coal Miner's Daughter is the 1980 biopic of country singer Loretta Lynn (played by Sissy Spacek) and her rise to fame. The movie primarily follows the relationship between Loretta and her husband/manager Doolittle (played by Tommy Lee Jones).                         
       
                           This is my second time viewing Coal Miner's Daughter and I wasn't terribly impressed by it. Biopics are fairly tricky since they can easily fall into cliche trappings. The movie, for the most part, does despite having naturalistic performances and a nitty gritty authenticity. The first hour of the film takes place in the poverty-stricken coal mining hills of Kentucky where Loretta grew up, then the next hour shows us her rise to country star. It's a fairly standard structure, but I give it some props for at least being more natural than other biopics.
                           Though my problem is that the movie seems a little too proud of its own authenticity. It seems to care more about its salt-of-the-earth, soot-covered nitty-gritty details and quirks than the story itself. Of course, details like that are great in any movie because they add texture and context. In the case of this movie, it's too telegraphed and obvious. And honestly, I just didn't care about these characters.
                             Now granted my own disinterest might have to do with my unfamiliarity with Loretta Lynn. And since I don't know that much about Loretta Lynn and her music, I'm not given a sufficient motivation for caring. I guess that's the danger of coming into a biopic like this: I would probably care about a biopic if it was someone I was interested in or felt what importance they had in whatever field they were in. Like, Raging Bull is one of my favorite movies, and I don't care about boxing whatsoever, but I can feel LaMotta's importance in that sport. The movie, in my opinion, doesn't really care about Loretta's music as much as it should. The music should be just as important as the subject. You would think the music would at least inform her character or her world. I don't know if it's because the director (Michael Apted) is a Englishman so he might not have an interest in that kind of regional music. I don't understand why I should care about Loretta or her husband if the music doesn't play a vital part of the story. I mean, it's there, you can hear it, but you can't feel it, if that makes sense. By the end of it, I'm not quite sure what I was supposed to get out of it, other than the obligatory sense that Loretta became successful.
                           
                         It's not a bad film, it's perfectly fine for the genre, but I personally found it uninteresting.