I Saw the Light

Hank Williams (Tom Hiddleston) marries recently divorced single mom Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen) in 1944 in an Alabama gas station. He's a hard drinking country singer with some small success. She starts singing with him despite objections from the band and his mother (Cherry Jones). Audrey's constant calling gets Fred Rose (Bradley Whitford) to sign them. They stop Audrey's singing as Hank strives to perform in the Opry. His constant back pains leading to alcohol and pain killer use is finally diagnosed as chronic spina bifida occulta. After his divorce from Audrey, he has a brief affair with Bobbi Jett resulting in a daughter. He meets teenager Billie Jean Jones (Maddie Hasson) and later marries her. He would die on January 1, 1953.

There is nothing substantive here. One would be better off to listen to Hank Williams music while watching a documentary about his life. It's very thin and I'm not talking about Hiddleston's physicality. One rarely gets a sense of the man or his marriage. There is no tension. There is no sense of his life or his work. His struggle with his back and alcohol is the obvious path but the movie doesn't elevate his pain. This is a waste of perfectly good talents. I laid all the blame on Marc Abraham who is more a producer than a writer or director.