DVD DETAILS:
Vision
The 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer is a serviceable affair, having frequent frame edge definition problems. It is sometimes murky with many backgrounds especially suffering. Apted is intent to sustain the level of authenticity throughout the film’s changing cultural and socio-economic environs. Hence, the detail which attends the shadowy coal mining scenes and the muddy township emerge as defining moments. This physicality of setting makes for an almost oppressive naturalism in the early scenes and there is a fine sense of the muted colours of autumn turning to winter. There is an overall evocative sense of seasons and time passing although the film is surprisingly quickly paced for such an essentially character-driven piece. An engrossing use of sunlight (hope?) adds resonance and the harsh reality of poverty in the initial scenes makes for a fine contrast to the wealth that Spacek lives within in the latter stages: thus making the film Apted’s treatment of the American Dream of success and fame. There is also a fine sense of progression to the locations: from the coal-mining hometown to smaller towns on the road and then onto the big city. The atmosphere of the Grand Ole Opry is convincingly recreated and the concert sequences have enough variety to prevent the film from ever becoming repetitious: the country music subculture is well recreated. Likewise, life spent touring on the road is convincingly relayed.
Sound
The sound transfer, however, is rather bare in its Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix, little better than such limits allow and with some notable background hiss. However, isolated details are mostly crisp and naturalistic, with minimal scoring except for the songs used in the course of the movie. These are sung by the actual actors involved (making for an unusual soundtrack album now something of a collector’s item). The film is at first grimly naturalistic, and with a fine use of music on radio to suggest the source of Spacek’s later passion for singing. What remains preserved is the way in which Spacek develops a voice – at first singing to herself, then to her kids and finally to ever increasing audiences – as a measure of self-definition: the film thus about one woman’s discovery of, and triumph in, self-expression. Spacek conveys the sheer enjoyment her character has in singing and the personal toll that it inevitably takes on her as she reacts to fame and the pressures of being a business commodity. The natural exuberance of Jones is well used to suggest him as the impetus behind her personal growth and his initial energy is nicely contrasted to his later, far more knowing deliberation and even wearied self-doubt. The refinement of a woman’s voice (literally and metaphorically) is the film’s point here and fans of country and western music may thus understandably regret the absence of a fuller sound transfer. read more
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