Coal Miner's Daughter: A Review

COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER

Loretta Lynn, the subject of Coal Miner's Daughter, lived a remarkable forty-two years after the release of her biopic. That should tell you not just how long Loretta Lynn lived, but how much she had lived when Coal Miner's Daughter premiered. The film is a perfect reflection of the subject: sincere, direct and deeply moving. 

Life is hard up in the hills of western Kentucky. Loretta Webb (Sissy Spacek) is the oldest daughter of coal miner Ted (Levon Helm) and housewife Clary (Phyllis Boyens). Loretty to her family, Loretta's life is filled with financial poverty but familial wealth. That hardscrabble but gentle life is interrupted by Doolittle "Mooney" Lynn (Tommy Lee Jones). Like the Webbs, Doolittle is a country boy, but he has just returned from military service in the Second World War. Despite Loretta being a mere 13 years old, Doo is determined to make her his wife. Ted and Clary see Doolittle as nothing but trouble. Loretta sees him as her ideal man. With major misgivings, the Webbs let the marriage go.

The facts of life are a shock to the now-15-year-old Loretta Lynn. Doo is not the ideal man either. He hits Loretta at least once. He steps out on her. However, they do genuinely love each other. The babies pop out in quick succession and with a relocation to Washington State, things look to be slightly better. Loretta loves to sing around the house. Doo, recognizing her talent, gets her a guitar instead of the wedding ring that she still does not have. Soon, she starts, albeit reluctantly, to build up a small reputation for her singing and songwriting in the nearby honkytonks. A family tragedy devastates Loretta. However, she agrees to push on with Doo to start pursuing a singing career.

Through a mix of hard work, relentless promoting and her extraordinary skills, Loretta Lynn manages to get her songs on the radio. That leads her to appear at the temple of country music, Nashville's Grand Old Opry. She is astonished to become friends with reigning country queen Patsy Cline (Beverly D'Angelo). This friendship grows as they tour together, where Cline serves as both mentor and unofficial sister. Their bond is broken by Cline's untimely death, which breaks Loretta's heart.

The stresses of the road, the exhaustion physical and emotional, start to fray on the First Lady of Country Music. She starts forgetting the words to her own songs. She is attacked by her fans, who do not shrink from cutting off her hair as she walks past them. Eventually, she collapses and needs time to recuperate. Back home in her secluded Tennessee ranch, she can rest, recover and reflect. Now returning in triumph, the Queen of Country debuts the story of her life, Coal Miner's Daughter. 

I remember that my Mexican-born mother loved both Coal Miner's Daughter and Loretta Lynn. They were from distinctly different worlds and lived experiences. As such, why would my mother relate so much to this woman from the hills of Kentucky? I think it is because like my mom, Loretta was not ashamed of who she was and where she came from. Coal Miner's Daughter does more than reflect Loretta Lynn's world. It treats that world and those who live in it with respect. Right from the start, we see that the Webbs and their community are rural but good people. They may not have great education and certainly do not have wealth. Life is a struggle for them. However, they have other things to enrich their lives. They have a sincerity and love for each other. 

The film is clear that this is not an ideal world. "If you born in the mountains, you got three choices. Coal mine, moonshine, or movin' on down the line", Ted Webb's cousin Lee Dollarhide (William Sanderson) tells Mooney when attempting to recruit him into stealing some moonshine to keep up with demand. Director Michael Apted never romanticizes this world. However, he never diminishes or looks down on it. Instead, he keeps things simple and basic. Apted lets the scenes and situations flow smoothly and naturally. Coal Miner's Daughter is a little over two hours long. However, one does not notice the time because things flow so well.

The performances in Coal Miner's Daughter are absolutely excellent. It is cliche to say "so-and-so IS such-and-such" when talking about actors in biographical films. What Spacek did in Coal Miner's Daughter was to make Loretta Lynn into a fascinating woman. It stretches the imagination that Spacek could be a thirteen-year-old in the early part of the film. However, Spacek is blessed with an innocent face and eyes that make Loretta Webb's naivete believable. 

As Coal Miner's Daughter progresses, we see Loretta Lynn's evolution. She can be feisty and direct, unafraid to stand up for herself. We also see how shockingly naive and innocent she is. At one point, Doolittle taunts her by refusing to tell her what "horny" means. Unaware of its implications, she blurts out on a live radio interview how she and Mooney were all "horny", startling both the interviewer and Mooney listening on the car radio. Spacek does an absolutely fantastic job in having us believe that Loretta could genuinely believe that "horny" was something innocuous versus salacious.

Sissy Spacek could be amusing as well. A good scene is when she tears into a radio DJ who claimed to have played her first single, I'm a Honky Tonk Girl when it was still in the envelope. Her firm outrage at being lied to make her blistering tone both charming and a bit frightening. Spacek can charm you as Loretta Lynn even when saying curious things. Commenting on her rapid rise to going onto the Opry stage, she tells Doo, "I ain't paid my dues yet". This comes from a sincere place in her heart, a belief that somehow, she was either not ready or not talented enough to be among figures like Ernest Tubbs, Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl (who all make cameo appearances, with Tubbs having the most screentime). Doolittle, without missing a beat and adding a bit of country charm, tells her, "Well, we'll pay them later then". 

One of the best and most moving scenes involves when Loretta and Ted are at the train station. Ted tells her that he will never see her again. She does not believe that, but it turns out to be true. I found myself getting emotional at this farewell scene. I laughed at Loretta's "horniness". I cheered when she told the floozy that Doo was fooling around with how she wasn't woman enough to take her man. Loretta's emotional and physical collapse on stage, in other hands, might have been overly dramatic. Spacek and Apted made it soft, which had a greater impact. 

While Sissy Spacek received the Academy Award for Coal Miner's Daughter, her costar Beverly D'Angelo more than held her own as Patsy Cline. Perhaps the Academy felt that her role was actually too small for consideration. She enters in the middle of Coal Miner's Daughter and exits long before the film ends. However, D'Angelo brought that mix of sophistication and sincere affection for Loretta as the glamorous Patsy Cline. D'Angelo made Cline into a perfect blend of sassy and sincerity. She was no fool, telling Lynn somewhat jokingly that she was worried that Lynn's rendition of I Fall to Pieces might end up being better than hers. However, as the film went on, we saw how Cline watched for Lynn like a sister. Patsy Cline had her own biopic years later with Sweet Dreams, which won Jessica Lange a Best Actress Oscar nomination as Cline. I still think that Beverly D'Angelo should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actress in Coal Miner's Daughter. She made Patsy Cline beautiful in every way. 

It is a credit to how good Beverly D'Angelo was in Coal Miner's Daughter that when Patsy Cline's death was announced via radio in the film, there were audible gasps and sobs from the audience that I saw the film with at the Plaza Classic Film Festival. They were clearly unaware that Patsy Cline had a tragic and untimely death. 

Tommy Lee Jones also was not nominated for his performance. It may have been over where he should have been Lead or Supporting, I cannot say. I will say that Jones was excellent as Doolittle "Mooney" Lynn (Mooney being a nickname owing to his past with moonshine per Lynn in the film's telling). He was a rascal from the start, a bit arrogant and full of himself. He was also, in his way, loyal and protective of Lynn. It was not self-interest that motivated Doolittle Lynn into getting Loretta to sing. In fact, at a certain point, he willingly pulled himself away from life on the road. Coal Miner's Daughter shows rather that it was Doolittle's sincere faith in Loretta's talent that drove him. He could be 

We get song performances from both Sissy Spacek and Beverly D'Angelo as Lynn and Cline. They used their own voices instead of lip-synching the familiar songs. However, it is a credit to Apted and especially to Spacek and D'Angelo that they sound very close to how the real Lynn and Cline sound like. I admit to getting misty-eyed with D'Angelo's rendition of Sweet Dreams. Granted, the song itself is deeply moving, beautiful and emotional for me. However, D'Angelo delivered it so well. Sissy Spacek was also quite adept at singing from the Loretta Lynn songbook. In the beginning of the film, Spacek's Loretta sings a lullaby to her infant sibling that sounds so much like Lynn that it is almost indistinguishable. Sissy Spacek sounded a lot like the real Loretta Lynn when speaking. When singing, she did an exceptional job too. The film closes with a performance of Coal Miner's Daughter. Listening to her rendition, you know that it is not the real Lynn. However, it is so close that it makes it almost indistinguishable. Oddly, Sissy Spacek's version I find actually too polished due to her diction. Loretta Lynn keeps the country vernacular in her singing, such as saying "warshburd" for "washboard" and "tird" for "tired". Spacek pronounces the words as most people would. 

The song and film Coal Miner's Daughter work because both are simple, direct and universal. Loretta Lynn, the Queen of Country, may be gone. Her legacy and songbook will remain forever. "Not much left but the floor, nothing lives here anymore, except the memories of a Coal Miner's Daughter". So long as music has the power to move us, or take us back, the memories of Loretta Lynn and Coal Miner's Daughter (song and film) will never fade.

1932-2022

DECISION: A+