Blaze

Ethan Hawke’s BLAZE is a lyrical, meandering portrait of a life that was short and raucous. Recounting the story of hard-living, larger-than-life country musician Blaze Foley – a.k.a. Michael Fuller, a.k.a. Deputy Dawg – BLAZE is a film full of memories and memories-within-memories. Through a vivid lead performance by newcomer Ben Dickey, the film tracks the legendary singer’s path through back roads and honky-tonks with plenty of Blaze’s own characteristic blend of dirty jokes, tall tales, and country-and-western folklore along the way. And then there’s the songs: uncannily performed by Dickey as well as Texas musician Charlie Sexton – who inhabits the ghostly persona of another doomed country great: Townes Van Zandt – the film’s soundtrack spin its own yarns of regret and heartbreak. Central to these Blaze’s bittersweet romance with Sybil Rosen (Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat), who follows him from a small shack in the idyllic Texas wilds to seek fame along the slow road to Austin. Co-written by Hawke and Rosen herself, BLAZE is a tender and melancholy rumination on that classic dilemma of country music: the choice between home and the road. (Leo Goldsmith)