Movie: Tender Mercies (Bruce Beresford, 1983)
I got what the film's title was going for, but wasn't aware of its actual meaning, or that it comes directly from the Bible. Rosa Lee (Tess Harper) baptises her kid, sings in her church's choir and prays for 'tender mercies'. She has lost her husband in Vietnam and now lives as a single mother on the Texas backroads. Here she owns a farm, a hotel and a gas station, surrounded by nothing but grassland. Rosa Lee takes the teachings of her faith seriously when she provides shelter and work to Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall), a broken down alcoholic and a formerly great country/western singer who has lost his fortunes, as well as any contact with his ex-wife and daughter. For Mac, this is a good opportunity to sober up (Rosa Lee agrees to him staying only if he stops drinking) and put his life back on track. In most cases, this would be what the whole movie is about. Here this all happens in the first 10 minutes, covering about 5 months, and a marriage, It turns out that Tender Mercies will not be a film about Mac's alcoholism, but about the ordinary domestic trials and tribulations of Rosa Lee and Mac. Aside from a major tragedy near the end, this is a subdued, plain film, that is mostly interested in exploring how the values and histories of its characters affect their lives. I liked it much more than expected, especially for how deftly it avoids embellishing conflicts and emotions.
Bruce Beresford is from Sydney and like his countrymen he knows how to frame his characters against a backdrop of isolated emptiness - near the end, Mac and Rosa Lee's conversation, filmed in one shot, at their allotment is an especially stunning example of this. And the film's only 'suspenseful' sequence works by emphasising the silence around Rosa Lee's motel and heightening our awareness of every car that passes it by. More importantly though, Beresford understands how the isolation shapes its characters' behaviour. It's more urgent to believe in God when you can't depend too much on other people saving you, and when most of those other people you meet in church. Similarly, the film understands there is a reason why in seemingly every country, New Year's concerts are dominated by stars like Dixie (Betty Buckley) who may not be the greatest artists in the world, but are extremely capable of bringing the audience along for the ride through overtly emotional peformances and lyrics that may be trite, but express highly recognisable feelings. Sometimes the point of music is not to be art, but to create a community. The film doesn't present the activities of the church or the country bars as particularly fashionable, or its characters as sophisticated, and sees this neither as a source of pride or of shame, though it is notable that Mac Sledge's first singing performance in the film, his long-awaited come back, happens just after being baptised (together with Rosa Lee's son). On stage, he looks extremely cool in his cowboy hat, flanked by a giant Texas flag
The film takes a similar approach in showing the relationship between Mac and Rosa Lee. It's unquestionable that their love is real, but it is not driven by romance. Beresford doesn't show the wedding and their decision to get married happens after a couple of scenes in which they work together, and help each other with their daily tasks, way before the film shows any sort of emotional or physical bond between them. A short kissing scene, later on, is not the epitome of chemistry either. It would go too far to call this a marriage of convenience, but it's much closer to being that than a marriage of love as we conventionally understand it. The film shows that the choices Mac and Rosa Lee make are rather sensible in context. They have few feasible options that would make their lives better and happier than getting married. What makes Tender Mercies much better than too many contemporary films that are unabashedly conservative, is that it knows that values are shaped by behaviour, feelings and personal and societal contexts, rather than the other way around. As a result it doesn't insist that its conservatism is inherently moral, but shows that it is simply a matter of circumstance.
Tender Mercies also unflinchingly observes the ills of its society. Tess Harper has a great monologue explaining to her son how the American government lied about her husband's death in Vietnam, while we also learn that she got her kid at 16. Almost every character in the film comes from, or leaves behind, a broken family and is shaped by an ill-advised teen marriage. It's fitting too that the film ends with a game of catch between father and son. Aside from the Vietnam War, the framed posters of the Dallas Cowboys in the kid's room are basically the only reference points to the whole society that exists beyond its characters' narrow reality. Finally, it's worth noting that while Robert Duvall is (reliably) great and won an Oscar, the real knockout here is Harper. She is fantastic portraying Rosa Lee as a way too young matriarch who has learned to be strong-willed and doesn't quite realise that the weight she has on her shoulders is deeply unfair.
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