Stephen Schiff

“…. For its first hour, Coal Miner's Daughter is as buoyant a piece of filmmaking as I've seen in months. And much of the pleasure is in the acting. As Doolittle, Tommy Lee Jones gives the beefy, sly, good-humored portrayal of which he's seemed capable ever since 1976's Jackson County Jail. And Sissy Spacek delivers the performance of a lifetime. With her pallid face, her wispy curls, and her soft, insinuating eyes, Spacek makes Loretta a prodigy of instinct and innocence and guts. Marching around in her bobby-socks and her frowzy stocking cap, she's a mercurial creature, a child in whom the future lover, mother and superstar intermingle. Spacek is 30 years old, but she's the only actress I know of who can play childhood and adulthood with equal conviction. Instead of simulating adolescence, she puts herself in a sort of teenage trance; the eyes that stare out at us are a 13-year-old's eyes. Which is why her young Loretta never falls into the sort of forced jauntiness that most adult actresses adopt to appear youthful. Apted gives her time to relax, to be solemn or laid-back or shy, to suggest the shifting moods of a strong yet unformed personality.

“…. And best of all, the film pays special attention to the growth of Loretta's voice. Sissy Spacek did all her own singing in this film (as did Beverly D'Angelo, who does a remarkable portrayal of Loretta's mentor, Patsy Cline), and if she never reaches the plaintive heights that the real Loretta Lyn scales, she also avoids the shrill, off-key renderings that made Gary Busey's otherwise magnificent Buddy Holly and Bette Midler's The Rose sound so bad on the home stereo. The crooning that Spacek does as she putters around the house and washes the dishes is quiet and unspectacular, but occasionally she'll hit a lovely high note or pull a perfect melisma like a rabbit from a hat. Then, as she practices amid screaming children and an ornery washing machine, the voice gains strength and assurance. And finally, when she first appears at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, she has become polished and stylish, the tone sliding into place from a stylized hoarseness with wonderful ease. Spacek uses her voice the way most actors use their walk and gestures: to suggest character development….

But… [a]s soon as Loretta makes it to glittery Nashville, Coal Miner's Daughter becomes sketchy, reticent, and trite: a drab lonely-at-the-top melodrama… [A]n onstage breakdown… pales next to the one Ronee Blakley brought off so poignantly when she played a Loretta Lynn-like figure in Nashville….

“And when Coal Miner's Daughter finally collapses, even its sundry beauties seem somehow forlorn…. [Apted and Rickman] miss the joy and terror that Loretta Lynn must have felt as she made her dizzying ascent and watched the past drop away beneath her. Indeed, by the end, we may be surprised to see how little we understand of the real Loretta and Doolittle, the ones who aren't mythic creatures, the ones who live among us still. All we know is that Loretta and Doolittle keep going somehow -- and that leaving their harsh Eden in the Kentucky hills has only made the going rougher.

Stephen Schiff
Boston Phoenix, March 11, 1980