Coal Miner’s Daughter

Sissy Spacek is one of those actresses that I’ve seen in things but is forever known to me as the troubled psychic in Stephen King’s Carrie, a film that she was so perfect for that she scored the rare Academy Award nomination for acting in a horror film. She was amazing in Missing and In the Bedroom, too—both films she was also nominated for—but I cannot speak for her other two nominations as I have not seen The River or Crimes of the Heart. Six Academy Award nominations for Best Actress; that’s not too shabby. Her only win, however, comes from Coal Miner’s Daughter, a biographical musical picture about the highly unlikely, yet true, events that led a young girl from the coal mining country of rural Kentucky to become a genuine country music star. She had talent and charisma, but she also had an enigmatic husband who pushed her into stardom, even as he abused her off-stage. This is the story of Loretta Lynn.

Films like this always play better to audiences who are already familiar with the music, but that isn’t a prerequisite to enjoying the film. You can go into a film like Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis or Walk the Lineknowing nothing about the music of Elvis or Johnny Cash and emerge a fan of the songs, ready to log onto Spotify or Apple Music and download some of their music. That can happen. But if you are familiar with the songs beforehand, you can enjoy the film on a whole different level. You can sing along to them, bask in their melodies, and even learn a few things about the composition of the songs that you didn’t already know. Maybe there is even a meaning to the songs that you didn’t pick up on from the lyrics, something that meant something to the artist when he or she wrote it. A good musical docudrama can enlighten you on things like that. 

Not all docudramas go that route, though. Coal Miner’s Daughter tells you the story about Loretta Lynn and her rise to fame, but it gives very little insight into her music. It chooses to focus on her marriage and her blossoming career instead. There is nothing inherently wrong with going that route; it’s just not what I would have expected. Because Loretta Lynn and her husband were both alive at the time of this film’s release, it, by necessity, cannot focus on too much of her life. Instead, it narrows in on a period of time from when she first meets the man she ends up marrying until her career starts to soar. 

The film opens up in the coal mining town of Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, in 1945. 13-year-old Loretta Webb (Sissy Spacek) is one of eight children of Ted Webb (Levon Helm), a Van Lear coal miner raising his family in poverty. Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn (Tommy Lee Jones), who also works at the mine, as does most everyone in the town, finds himself attracted to her. In 1948, when he is 22 and she is 15, the two are married, and over the next four years, she has four children with him. But not everything is rosy in their marriage. On their wedding night, she, inexperienced as she is, resists his sexual advances, and he forces himself on her. She has also caught him in the arms of another woman occasionally. On one of their anniversaries, she asks him to finally provide her with a wedding ring, but because rings are too expensive, he buys her a pawned guitar instead, even though she doesn’t know how to play. She ends up teaching herself while singing to their young children, and Doolittle (“Doo” for short) sees an opportunity. 

Under the guise of taking her out on a special date to a local honky-tonk, they show up only for her to be horrified to find out she is on the program to play before a large group of strangers. When she tries to hide in the bathroom, he finds her and makes her go out on stage. The response from the audience is overwhelmingly positive, so he books time for her at a recording studio, and they cut a record that he mails out to all the radio stations in an attempt to get it on the air. This eventually pays off, and Loretta catches the attention of established country singer Patsy Cline (Beverly D’Angelo), who helps further Loretta’s career. Meanwhile, Doo is working hard to drive his wife’s career and takes offense whenever someone suggests he is coasting off her success. 

There is a lot we aren’t privy to about the relationship between Loretta and Doo. Some of this is explored in her autobiography, but no marriage is a complete open door to the public, and there is always going to be some speculation as to how this volatile couple stayed married for nearly fifty years, ending only when he died in 1996. Doo was not a very nice man in real life, and it is surprising that when this film came out, he wasn’t more vocal about the way he is portrayed here. Tommy Lee Jones can’t quite pull off being in his early twenties during the first part of this film, nor does he come off as being a romantic figure. He’s about thirty-five here and just as grumpy and gruff as he currently is in his seventies. It serves his character well. When he gets angry and starts fighting it is completly believable and you can see that anger always lurking just behind his eyes. Where things get shaky is his exaggerated Southern accent that does disappear a time or two throughout the picture. Sissy Spacek, who is from Texas originally, fares a bit better, but she, too, is exaggerating the accent a bit at times. 

The rise of Loretta Lynn into country music stardom is not all that different from that of many other talents that made it big. This is not meant to be all that inspiring of a story nor one to serve as a blueprint for anyone’s aspirations. There are many aspects that are painful and sad. When Doo gets permission to marry Loretta, he does so on two conditions: he is never to hit her and he is not to take her away from her hometown. Doo does both of those things very early on and, when Loretta leaves for Washington with him, she is never to see her father alive again. The next time she comes home is for his funeral. 

The film also leans towards making it seem like Loretta’s career is almost exclusively because of Doo. Loretta had talent for sure and the film doesn’t dismiss that, but it paints her like someone who never wanted that life and it was him that was constantly thrusting her into the limelight. The real Loretta Lynn was a consultant on the picture and even hand-picked Sissy Spacek to play her, so maybe this is an accurate portrayal of how things were; who am I to say for sure? It just seems like it soft-pedals her involvement in her own career. Every so often she takes the front seat but most of the time it seems like she is just a passenger in her own life.

Aside from Sissy’s award-winning performance, the highlight of this film is the music. I am not a country music fan in general and I knew nothing of her music going into this film. What I heard during this viewing convinced me to pick up a greatest hits compilation so that I can better appreciate her unique talent. The music is both melodic and emotional and features some unique vocals that I’m told are mostly accurate to the source. Three years later, Sissy would release her own album of country music, including a song credited to both herself and Loretta. This is a side of Sissy I was not familiar with before. She also manages to imbue the songs with a rich sense of emotion so that you feel they each have a special meaning to her. I just wish the film had done a better job communicating what those meanings were. 

The film is an above-average musical docudrama that tells a story that casual fans and newbies wouldn’t already know. Where it falters is by not giving any real insight into a truly fascinating and enigmatic marriage nor any real background into many of the songs that made Loretta Lynn famous. The film is entertaining, and occasionally harrowing, but it’s also lacking in the depth I would have liked to see in a film of this sort. Still, it was never boring, and the music was great; that puts it a step above many of these types of films and makes it well worth the time investment. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Bernard Schwartz

Best Actress: Sissy Spacek (won)

Best Screenplay - Based on Materials from Another Medium: Thomas Rickman

Best Art Direction: John W. Corso and John M. Dwyer

Best Cinematography: Ralf D. Bode

Best Film Editing: Arthur Schmidt

Best Sound: Richard Portman, Roger Heman, and James R. Alexander

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Release Date: March 7, 1980

Running Time: 124 Minutes

Rated PG

Starring: Sissy Spacek, Tommy Lee Jones, Beverly D’Angelo, and Levon Helm

Directed by: Michael Apted