hugh Jackman in Song Sung Blue, Ralph Fiennes in The Choral and Resurrection
Song Sung Blue
★★★★
(E) 131 minutes
It took me a long time to put aside my preoccupation with Hugh Jackman’s bad wig series. Song Sung Blue.
I never quite nailed it, but after a while the wigs stopped mattering, marred by the mix of self-deprecation and arrogance in Jackman’s performance as Mike Sardina, star of the Neil Diamond tribute show he created with his wife and close collaborator in Milwaukee in the 1990s.
Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman in Song Sung Blue.
Sardina and Claire Stengl emerged from the network of small-scale concerts that kept live music going in American towns and suburbs, and they grew from these humble beginnings to fill increasingly larger venues. Their big moment came when Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder became a fan and came on stage with them in 1995.
The film’s director, Craig Brewer, calls them “barroom heroes,” and that description strikes the right chord. When we first meet them, we see that they are part of an army of artists working part-time imitating rock stars past and present. Claire (Kate Hudson) does the Patsy Cline set as Mike introduces himself. But he decided he was done with the impersonation. Instead, he is about to take a big step into the unknown by trying to be himself.
Claire greets this news with a less radical suggestion. Why doesn’t he leap in a different direction and become a “Neil Diamond interpreter”?
At first he was stunned by the idea. He wouldn’t dare. Diamond is one of his idols. He insists, and after a series of rehearsals in his garage, with Claire playing keyboards and singing background vocals, they find a rhythm.
From left to right, Hugh Jackman, Fisher Stevens, Michael Imperioli and Jim Belushi.Credit: access point
Based on a 2008 documentary about the Sardinas and backed by Diamond himself, the film quickly turns into a Neil Diamond extravaganza, with his greatest hits punctuating the narrative, coloring its emotional tone, and marking milestones in the couple’s tumultuous career. At one point, a freak accident leaves Claire sidelined for months, and Mike, a recovering alcoholic traumatized by his wartime experiences in Vietnam, comes close to going under.
But Brewer has no intention of making a crying child. These two are working-class stoics who are used to bouncing back from the hard knocks they’ve endured over the years. The only glamor they know is the kind sewn into their costumes, yet they share a shared sense of optimism. It can dazzle them at times, but it also makes them irrepressible.
The film is largely a Hollywood product. The action is shaped and intensified to evoke drama; Jackman and Hudson are flashy versions of the Sardinas, the kind of gilding one might expect. Brewer and the production team put a lot of effort and effort into ensuring the environments were grounded in reality.
Mike’s cabin, the home of the couple and their children from previous marriages, is the kind of house one could find in suburbia anywhere, with its cluttered rooms and unkempt lawn dotted with a single flowerbed. Mike has a tendency to walk around the house in his underpants while strumming his guitar. The garage stands out as the couple’s rehearsal studio; when they get a support group, the neighbors throw impromptu concerts because the weather is too hot to keep the revolving door closed.
Rather than being sentimental, it’s basically a good-natured film, as Brewer says, paying tribute to those who found their niche as entertainers beloved by audiences lucky enough to find them and see what they could do. After all, these bad wigs could almost look cute.
