Ever since the Oscar nominations were announced, there have been a lot of people on social media complaining about Kate Hudson’s nomination for Best Actress. She was nominated for the musical biopic, Song Sung Blue, and the argument that I keep seeing, over and over again, is that the nomination should have gone to One Battle After Another‘s Chase Infiniti or maybe Eva Victor for Sorry, Baby.
To those people, I can only say, “Shut up and watch the damn movie.”
In Song Sung Blue, Kate Hudson plays Claire, a hairdresser and part-time Patsy Cline imitator who meets and marries Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman), an auto mechanic who loves to sing and perform. (When they first meet, Mike has been hired to pretend to be Don Ho at a county fair.) Claire and Mike start performing as Thunder and Lightning, performing covers of Neil Diamond songs and eventually becoming something of a pop cultural institution in Wisconsin. (At their height, they open for Pearl Jam. The actor who played Eddie Vedder looks nothing like Eddie Vedder but you do have to appreciate a celebrity impersonation in the middle of a movie about celebrity impersonators.) Eventually, tragedy strikes. A car accident leaves Claire struggling with pills and her own mental health. Mike, who is 20 years sober when the movie begins, struggles with his sobriety. There are laughs and there are tears. In fact, there’s a lot of tears. I knew the details of the story before I saw the film but, having recently lost both my father and my aunt, I was still sobbing by the end of the movie.
As for Kate Hudson, she’s wonderful in the film and more than deserving of her nomination. Both she and Hugh Jackman give empathetic and sincere performances as the type of people who other movies would probably hold up to ridicule. They’re both eccentric and they both have their demons. Mike is haunted by his experiences in Vietnam and his daughter points out that Mike has essentially switched addictions, from alcohol to music. Claire struggles with depression even before the car accident that changes her life. They’re not flawless. They’re not perfect. But they’re beautiful when they’re performing together. As played by Hudson, Claire goes from being somewhat insecure to being someone who has definitely found her voice and when it appears that she might never perform again, it’s heartbreaking because the viewer understands exactly how much being on stage means to Claire.
As a film, Song Sung Blue runs a bit long but in the end, I was charmed by its unashamed celebration of Americana. Song Sung Blue allows us to enter a world where a bus driver can also be talent booker and a dentist can double as an agent. It’s a world where anyone with the courage to take the stage and perform from the heart can be a star, if just for one night. It’s a crowd-pleasing film, one that says it’s okay to sometimes sing the popular song that everyone loves. “He has other songs!” Mike says whenever anyone demands that he start his show with Sweet Caroline but, in the end, everyone is really happy when he sings it. How could they not be? He and Claire sing it really well.
One final note about Kate Hudson. I’ve always felt that a lot of her films, for better or worse, were versions of the type of films that her mom could have starred in during the 1970s and 80s. And I do have to say that it’s easy to imagine younger versions of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell playing Claire and Mike. However, Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman make both the film and the characters their own. By the end of the movie, you’ve forgotten that you’re watching Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman. You’re watching Thunder and Lightning!
Through the Shattered Lens 