Tender Mercies

Plot synopsis:
Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall), a washed up, alcoholic country singer, awakens at a run-down Texas roadside motel and gas station after a night of heavy drinking. He meets the owner, a young widow named Rosa Lee (Tess Harper), and offers to work in exchange for a room. Rosa Lee, whose husband was killed in the Vietnam War, is raising her young son, Sonny (Allan Hubbard), on her own. She agrees to let Mac stay under the condition that he does not drink while working. The two begin to develop feelings for one another, mostly during quiet evenings sitting alone and sharing bits of their life stories.Mac resolves to give up alcohol and start his life anew. After some time passes, he and Rosa Lee wed. They start attending a Baptist church on a regular basis. One day, a newspaper reporter visits the hotel and asks Mac whether he has stopped recording music and chosen an anonymous life. When Mac refuses to answer, the reporter explains he is writing a story about Mac and has interviewed his ex-wife, Dixie Scott (Betty Buckley), a country music star who is performing nearby.After the story is printed, the neighborhood learns of Mac's past, and members of a local countrywestern band visit him to show their respect. Although he greets them politely, Mac remains reluctant to open up about his past. Later, he secretly attends Dixie's concert. She passionately sings several songs that Mac wrote years earlier, and he leaves in the middle of the performance. Backstage, he talks to Dixie's manager, his old friend Harry (Wilford Brimley). Mac gives him a copy of a new song he has written and asks him to show it to Dixie. Mac tries to talk to Dixie, but she becomes angry upon seeing him and warns him to stay away from their 18-year-old daughter, Sue Anne (Ellen Barkin).Mac returns home to a jealous Rosa Lee and assures her he no longer has feelings for Dixie, who he describes as "poison" to him. Later, Harry visits Mac to tell him, seemingly at Dixie's urging, that the country music business has changed and his new song is no good. Hurt and angry, Mac drives away and nearly crashes the car. He buys a bottle of whiskey but, upon returning home to a worried Rosa Lee and Sonny, he tells them he poured it out. He admits he tried several times to leave Rosa Lee, but found he could not. Some time later, Mac and Sonny are baptized together in Rosa Lee's church.Eventually, Sue Anne visits Mac, their first encounter since she was a baby. Mac asks whether she got any of his letters, and she says her mother kept them from her. Sue Anne also reports that Dixie tried to keep her from visiting Mac and that she plans to elope with her boyfriend despite her mother's objections. Mac admits he used to hit Dixie and that she divorced him after he tried to kill her in a drunken rage. Sue Anne asks whether Mac remembers a song about a dove he sang to her when she was a baby. He claims he does not, but after she leaves he sings to himself the hymn "On the Wings of a Dove."Boys at school bully Sonny about his dead father, and he and Mac grow closer. The members of the local country band ask Mac permission to perform one of his songs, and he agrees. Mac begins performing with them and they make plans to record together. His newfound happiness is interrupted when he learns Sue Anne has been killed in a car accident. Mac attends his daughter's funeral at Dixie's lavish home in Nashville and comforts her when she breaks down.Mac returns to Rosa Lee in despair. He says, "I don't know why I wandered out to this part of Texas drunk, and you took me in and pitied me and helped me to straighten out, marry me. Why? Why did that happen? Is there a reason that happened? And Sonny's Daddy died in the war, my daughter killed in an automobile accident. Why? See, I don't trust happiness. I never did; I never will."Back home, Mac keeps quiet about his emotional pain, although he wonders aloud to Rosa Lee why his once sorry existence has been given meaning and, on the other hand, his daughter died. Throughout his mourning, Mac continues his new life with Rosa Lee and Sonny. In the final scene, Sonny finds a football Mac has left him as a gift. Mac watches the hotel from a field across the road and sings "On the Wings of a Dove" to himself. Sonny thanks him for the football and the two play catch together in the field.

Tags: romantic

Review:
This moving and thought-provoking film is a timeless classic of redemption and perseverance.Robert Duvall totally captures the pain, heartache, despair and ultimate survival of a once beloved entertainer.The film is an emotional tour-de-force for all the main characters, as they deal with forgiveness, doubt, loss of faith and memories of what might have been .......The direction, screenplay, music and cinematography are all top-notch and add to the realistic feel of the film.In a career that has seen a number of great performances, this quiet, unassuming Duvall film will leave you inspired as well as thoughtful.
"Tender Mercies" is a strong character study about a washed-up country singer (Robert Duvall, in his Oscar-winning role) who finds the will to live and makes the most of his life.
Excellent and somewhat surprising supporting performances came from newcomer Tess Harper (discovered for this film by Duvall and Beresford) Ellen Barkin and Betty Buckley.
It's a lot more than just seeing an Oscar-winning performance by Robert Duvall as Texan and former C&W singer and writer, "Mac Sledge." It's simply good storytellingI can't say I am a fan of Duvall's country singing, but that is the only thing I didn't like.
In addition, actors Buckley (who can sing, too), Wilford Brimley and Ellen Barkin all give memorable supporting performances.It was an interesting tale of something I have rarely seen on film in the past 50 years: a good Christian woman lifting up a man to her level.
Robert Duvall richly deserved the Oscar he won for Best Actor, and Bruce Beresford's direction is quirky but consistently entertaining.The most wonderful aspect of this movie is how the screenwriter (Horton Foote) doesn't let the characters engage in all the obvious, "Hollywood" histrionics that the plot would allow them to do.
"Tender Mercies" is one of those rare Hollywood films that works in all departments, from the cast, the writer, the cinematographer, right on down to the smallest contributors.The story concerns a popular country music recording artist, Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall), hooked on alcohol, used up by the Nashville shredding machine and now adrift looking for new directions when a younger widow, Rosa Lee (Tess Harper in her movie debut), running a second-rate motel in east Texas, with a son, Sonny (Allan Hubbard), to raise, takes him in.
Like Mac, Lefty was able to overcome the handicap and make a triumphant return to stardom just before an untimely death caused by his rambunctious life style.Not only does Robert Duvall successfully pick and sing other artists' songs, he contributes two good compositions of his own, "Fool's Waltz," and "I've Decided to Leave Her Forever." Needless to say, Duvall deserved the Oscar he won for his performance.The highly underrated Tess Harper keeps up with Robert Duvall all the way.
Tess Harper played Rosa Lee, Mac's new wife." Adding to that note, Tessie's parents, the Washam's, owned and operated a hardware store in Mammoth Spring at the time "Tender Mercies" was released..
TENDER MERCIES is a simple story of a country western singer's rise from the depths of drunken despair to respectability again after meeting a woman (TESS HARPER) with whom he falls in love, marries and is encouraged to try his hand at music again.ROBERT DUVALL is Mac, the washed up singer, now the handyman at the motel run by Harper, who lives there with her young son.
Duvall plays the role with conviction, lending his voice to the songs in pleasant country style.His ex-wife is bitter and unforgiving (BETTY BUCKLEY), and sees everything, even the tragic death of their daughter (ELLEN BARKIN) in terms of herself as the spotlight--and unable to treat him with any sort of respect.
But he basks in the loving attention of his wife and his adopted son, getting his nourishment from his relationship with them rather than anything from his past.It's a bittersweet story, simple and direct without any sub-plots or any kind of distraction and passes the time quickly in ninety minutes, more a character study of Mac than anything else.I'm not a fan of country music nor this sort of western, but it has a certain homespun appeal and Duvall, of course, is an actor worth watching.
A broken-down, middle-aged country singer (Robert Duvall) gets a new wife, reaches out to his long-lost daughter, and tries to put his troubled life back together.The film encompasses several different themes, including the importance of love and family, the possibility of spiritual resurrection amid death, and the concept of redemption through Mac Sledge's conversion to Christianity.
Ah, he can't sing, but he gets a nice voice-over during a honky tonk gig.So former Country star Duval has fallen hard and end drunkenly ends up at a rural Austin motel to take up with Tess Harper, a widow of the Vietnam War. Her young son needs a father.
An endearing portrait of a weather-beaten American country musician Mac Sledge (Duvall), who takes the pledge and plumps for an ordinary life with his new wife Rose Lee (Harper) in the sticks.
Fetching up in a motel in a middle-of-nowhere Texas, the lush Mac is broke and has to pay off his staying by working for the motel owner, that happens to be Rose Lee, a young widow who has lost her husband in the Vietnam war and now runs the motel with her school-age son Sonny (Hubbard, this is his sole screen credit but he is down right sympathetic).
Meantime, Mac's backstory trickles alongside his new-found happiness, his ex-wife Dixie Scott (Buckley, shrilly shines in her Dolly Parton-inflected singing bent and edgy streak) is still a highly demanded touring singer feeding off on songs Mac wrote for her, and Mac has been proscribed from seeing their daughter Sue Anne (Ellen Barkin's second film credit), now in a troubled age of 18, ever since the inimical divorce (whose raison d'être entails alcoholism and domestic violence).
So naturally, there are some fences needed mending, and through tacit love, old/new friendship and religion (not pedagogic but with a waft of sincere communion), Mac will eventually get hold of the most precious values about love, loss, family and life itself (past and present), they are mundanely traditional, but gleaming with a patina of poetic finesse under Beresford's sober and unobtrusive execution (you might anticipate an old soak's inevitable interlude of backsliding, which would serve as a jolting plot swerve, but nonetheless, that doesn't need to happen every time in a movie's plot!), which elevates this gem from other blasé offerings replete with lachrymosity and/or melancholia.The film is based on American playwright Horton Foote's tender-hearted and unaffected script (also reaped an Oscar), his very first original screenplay if truth be told, and there is no dispute on Mr. Duvall's quietly touching impersonation of a country singer in his own raw voice, like Mac's persona, his musical rendition is also mostly touching when he is simply strumming and humming inside his homestead, music should always have its self-pleasing precept before becoming a crowd-pleasing commodity.
However, it is utterly remiss that Tess Harper is hardly hailed for her equally brilliant turn (a Golden Globe nomination is the solitary consolation, but she is leading in my book), an immaculate screen debut, her Rose Lee exemplifies a woman who truly understands how to tame a jaded soul and wills herself to stand behind her imperfect husband and support him through the vagaries, it is such a rare performance completely devoid of pretension and self- awarenss, her tranquil gaze magnificently rounds off this essential small-tale-with-a-big-heart boon, a slam-dunk melodrama..
Robert Duvall, in an Oscar-winning role, is a has-been country singer given a second chance with a new wife and a stepson (the previous father/husband in this family had been killed in Vietnam) while his ex-wife continues a successful singing career while prohibiting him from seeing their daughter due the the fact that he used to be an alcoholic and tended to be violent when he was drunk.
Horton Foote's original screenplay also won the other Oscar that Tender Mercies took home.If you're a country music fan you'll love this film and for Robert Duvall fans it's a must..
Reduced to a life of drunkenness, a former famous country singer finds the inspiration to turn his life around after befriending a lonely widow who works an outskirts gas station in this Horton Foote scripted drama that won Robert Duvall his only ever Oscar.
Emotional, engaging drama.An alcoholic drifter, Mac Sledge (played by Robert Duvall), finds himself in a small Texas town.
I was pleasantly surprised on how good this film was, and it certainly hits home.Bruce Beresford's film is about a middle-aged, once-famous country singer named Mac whose life was turned upside down by alcohol.
But life gets complicated when his long-lost daughter comes back into his life and when a chance arises to resurrect his music career.It's surprising that Robert Duvall has only one Oscar win to his name, but that came with this film and you can see why.
We get some riveting supporting performances by Tess Harper as his new wife, Betty Buckley as his bitter ex-wife, and Ellen Barkin as his long-lost daughter.Overall, Tender Mercies is a small, emotional drama that is led by Robert Duvall's heartfelt performance and the notion of what it's like to change for the better.
That's kind of the theme of this slow-developing character study of a damaged man named Mac (Robert Duvall), former country songwriter and singer.The script tells the story of Mac and his life in the slow lane, and his relationship to Rosa (Tess Harper) and others around him.
As such, the film's tone was less evocative than it could have been.Slow-moving and very low-key, "Tender Mercies" offers viewers a plausible and deeply thematic story of life in a rural setting with characters that are believable and fairly likable.
Standing in stark contrast to the superhero and graphic novel special effects extravaganzas of today, this little film takes a slow, simmering approach as it deals with real emotions of life.Robert Duvall won his only (so far) Oscar (he's been nominated 6 times) for playing Mac Sledge, a divorced former C&W singer/songwriter who spends each day trying to kill the pain by draining bottles of booze.
The similarities to Jeff Bridges' 2009 film Crazy Heart are unmistakable, but this film is much quieter with emotions being relayed through the eyes and body language of the key characters.Mac's gradual path to redemption comes courtesy of war-widow Rosa Lee, played exceedingly well by Tess Harper (her first feature film).
I won't go into describing the plot because so many other people already have, but there's one thing that I don't think anyone else has touched on and I wanted to give my opinion on it.If you look at the two women in Mac Sledge's life, that's where you'll see the point of the whole story.Rosa lost her young husband to a war not long after they got married and could never find out how or even when he died.
What was so well shown was that all fame is ephemeral and can be gone in a flash, so deeper values must be sought and lived instead.Tess Harper, as his practical and loving wife and Texas motel owner who gave the old ex-country singer/present drunk his last chance at life by first employing him and then marrying him, was truly outstanding.
And, since this is a film that earned Robert Duvall the Oscar for Best Actor, I decided to give it a try once again.So what did I think this time?
A gentle quiet film, wonderfully written by Horton Foote, and featuring a magnificent performance by Robert Duvall as an alcoholic ex-country singer star, who rediscovers himself by finding a family.
The supporting work by Tess Harper and Betty Buckley is worth mentioning as well, as is Bruce Beresford's understated but always effective and evocative direction.But ultimately it's Foote's screenplay, set in a world where predictability and cliché are the usual, that manages to pull off the almost impossible and create something unique, tender, and new..
Robert Duvall was awarded an Oscar for his performance in this quiet film about a down and out country music singer who rebuilds his life in the Texas flatlands.
Left for dead in a desolate motel room in the middle of the Texas plains, it is here where this former star begins to build a modest, yet honest life from his own ruins.This is perhaps Robert Duvall's best work, and indeed he was rewarded with the Oscar for best actor.
The use of irregular shots is also extremely effective in drawing--no, yanking the viewer's attention in the right direction in ambivalent plot moments.If you like Robert Duvall, or have any interest toward failure/redemption, the business side of Country music, rural Southern scenes, or enjoy a strong subject, subtly put, you should definitely see this film.
This isn't, after all, a glorified music video vehicle for an established country star - it's a quiet film about real people.The look and feel of "Tender Mercies" falls in close to what the title promises.
Bobby Duvall's Oscar-Winning performance as a washed-up singer, is flawless, and Bruce Beresford directs this story with great patience.'Tender Mercies' tells the story of Mac Sledge, played by Duvall, a recovering alcoholic country music singer, who seeks to turn his life around through his relationship with a young widow and her son in rural Texas.Horton Foote's Screenplay is beautiful, as said before.
A Work Of Art. Horton Foote has written a fine story with rich character sketches: Mac Sledge a divorced, drinker, country song writer who rebuilds his life.
"Tender Mercies" (1983, color, 92 minutes) is one of Roger Ebert's "Great Films." It won Oscars for leading male actor (Duvall) and screenplay (Foote).
Mac Sledge (Duvall) starts the film in a drunken stupor at least partially caused by his divorce from his country star wife, Dixie.
Rosa Lee, (a young Tess Harper) as a young Christian widow with an 8 year-old son, lets him do odd jobs to pay off his debt and then agrees to have him stay on to help out around the motel.They fall in love and marry as he gradually leaves the bottle and regains interest in his music.This really is a story of redemption and the love and support that a fallen person needs to get back on his feet.
It is very sincere and real.It is especially interesting to see the ever surprising Robert Duvall sing the songs and dance to the country music as if he really were a country music star.Of course at that time most people remembered his role as the lawyer in the Godfather films but he has since shown that he can play a retired Cuban barber and an assassin who loves Tango..
I don't know that it necessarily makes it the "best movie ever," but this film is absolutely "perfect:" it has a realistic, heartwarming story line; the three leads (led by on of the great actors of out time) are likable and genuine; all of the supporting characters are likewise; and the performers are also the same.
From the cinematography, to the excellent screenplay and direction, and especially to the outstanding cast, Tender Mercies is a must see film.Robert Duvall's career has really run the gamut in the last few years.
Great casting, good music and one of the best actors of all time, Robert Duvall, make Tender Mercies an all time great..
Tender Mercies (1983)*** (out of 4) Robert Duvall picked up the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Mac Sledge, a country music singer who finds himself broke due to alcohol.
Relationships evolve in unexpected ways and change the participants, for better or worse.The narrative from the intense scene in the garden with Mac and Rosa to the end of the film summarizes the tenets of existentialism in a manner that would make Camus jealous.Even if you are not a country and western music fan the songs in this movie are such an integral part of it that the strength of the movie can at least stimulate an appreciation of the genre.Most all of us have had some tender mercies granted to us in our lives.
Simple, wonderfully acted, quietly effective drama about an alcoholic singer, Mac Sledge(Robert Duvall)whose career and life is careening into a complete disaster until he meets kind, warm-hearted Rosa Lee(Tess Harper), the widow of a young man who died in Vietnam and mother to a gentle, intelligent little boy.
Mac has a second ex-wife, Dixie(Betty Buckley), now quite a huge Country music star, he was abusive to when drunk that denies him a chance to re-unite with his 18-year old daughter Sue Anne(Ellen Barkin).
Tragedy will inevitably strike Mac's life when Sue Anne decides to run away with a musician in Dixie's band, who is a drunk like he once was.Unlike other films of it's ilk, "Tender Mercies" doesn't take that melodramatic turn one might expect.
But upon thinking of it (and just the fact that I'd spend that much time thinking about it shows you how great a film this is) I realized, no, the story is so universal, the acting so excellent, the music so enthralling, it passes boundaries and anyone can enjoy it.It's difficult to believe that Betty Buckley and Robert Duvall are actually doing their own singing since neither has been given enough credit for those talents.
Bruce Beresford directs this wonderfully moody small town drama, which sees actor Robert Duvall playing an alcoholic country singer who divorces his wife and takes up odd jobs at a Texas gas station to make ends meet.
"Tender Mercies" is a drama film directed by Bruce Beresford and nominated for five Academy Awards including the Best Picture, and won 2 of them, Best Original Screenplay, Horton Foote, and Best Actor in a Leading Role, Robert Duvall.
As the story opens, washed-up country singer Mac (Robert Duvall) is dead drunk in a shabby Texas motel room.