COUNTRY MUSIC LOVE

LONG DRAWN OUT EMOTIONS INSPIRE SONGWRITING

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Director John Hillcoat uses an ‘all or nothing’ attitude as a narrative device in the dramatization of the true to life love story of two country music stars.

Michael Shannon costars with Jessica Chastain as country singers George Jones and Tammy Wynette in the Showtime 6 episode streaming series, George & Tammy (2022).

The first episode establishes the actors as country music singers whose dramatized characters quickly fall in love. But Shannon shows that the devil does not need rock and roll to ruin love and life.

Shannon can play good and bad with the bad approaching the General Zod character he created for Man of Steel (2013) and the good being, well…

George Jones is depicted as a talented nice guy when he is sober, but when he is drunk, as in drinking all day and all night long, he becomes a bit of a demon.

Chastain loses a bit of weight for the part of the country singer to highlight her acting range even without the facial prosthetic she wore as Tammy Faye Bakker in the Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021).

Hillcoat intersperses scenes about the developing love relationship with as many if not more singing scenes, as Shannon and Chastain reportedly trained their voices to sing their characters songs, as opposed to lip sinking them.

The one main narrative is about country singers having to live their songs and feel their songs to really perform well. Hillcoat then gradually spins the singing scenes out of the narrative until the love story narrative begins to dominate a bit. But the couple live and breathe country music as a result, and so a singing scene is always not too far away.

Wynette declares that some of the best songs are created from ‘sadness being handed down’. And the narrative shows how whatever happiness is created is gradually and irrevocable removed by that sadness accumulating until there is just about nothing left.

The music careers of the two country music superstars twists and turns as much as the love story twists and turns. George initially has a successful business partnership with his record label, but he leaves that arrangement at great financial and personal cost to record duets with his love interest.

Tammy knows early on that George finds the devil in drink, but George promises that Tammy’s love will heal his heart. Of course, George never stays sober for long, and his fits of drunken rage get worse and worse.

The narrative takes the audience through the creation of several famous country songs such as Stand by Your Man (1968).

Yellow and light green colors stand out.

Hillcoat starts to overlap the singing with the story in episode two. 

By episode 3 the happy love couple are having a baby. Wynette already has a handful of children from two previous relationships, but the couple keep going and making a lot of money, which helps.

The love story gets deeper and more intense but so does the drinking and then the drink of the sixties gives way to the drugs of a faster paced generation.

Chastain puts on the glam with the big hair and big glasses of the era, while Hillcoat uses a kind of Studio 54 finish on the film to create a tone and atmosphere with many scenes shot in concerts or back stage such as at the Grand Ole Opry.

Cinematographer Igor Martinovic keeps the set lights, concert smoke and stage light all in balance, while Hillcoat moves the camera about for several different interesting scene frames which are repeated, including a long shot from low on the stage floor looking up at the country music performers.

Jones eventually moves on to cocaine and Tammy to morphine.

The couple seem to keep each other alive though, even after the celebrity marriage falls apart. But Jones just will not accept that Tammy is a bigger country music star than him even when the story is obviously coming to a tragic conclusion.

Jones at a later point in the narrative has to open a concert for Tammy and refuses to finish his set and leave the stage so that Tammy is out of time to follow him in the line-up as the headliner. The series had started with Tammy opening for George.

There is more playful manipulation of time with an intertextual flashback to when they see themselves younger in the earlier episodes.

The actors also have fun with the hair and makeup department, as everyone gradually ages from up and coming singer songwriters to country music legends and national icons.

And if the script includes the song lyrics, the script is really good.

George & Tammy is streaming in Canada on Crave.