“Young people just don’t know how good they have it.”
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These are words uttered by a member of Mike (Hugh Jackman)’s AA group early in the film. They’re right, right? The young foos are just ignorant of the random aches and pains and world weary experience that comes with age. Jerks!
Of course, being, errrrr... 15 years old myself (in spirit), like, that stuff I just said certainly doesn’t apply to me.
Wait, let’s rewind. “Song Sung Blue” is a movie about a Neil Diamond tribute band. Mike and Claire (Kate Hudson) are the band. They get success, drug and/or alcohol addiction derails them, they recover, and have big a comeback. See: Just about every biopic about every singer or band ever made. The stuff that happens is pretty typical...
Except for that line. “Young people just don’t know how good they have it.” There’s a flipside line, not said by anybody in the movie but that you might have heard: “It gets better.” This is what you tell young people who are having a rough go of it. Young people don’t know how good they have it. It gets better.
They’re both kind of lies.
In a sense they aren’t. It is pretty cool to wake up without back pain and be able to @#$! like a rabbit. Also... From a macro, sociological standpoint, it kind of does get better. I mean, it depends on your definition of ‘better’, of course. If you think the goal of humanity is to form the pan universal empire ruled by you, I don’t know if that’s in the cards. But, if you are a fan of just empathy and understanding other people, we’re better. Doesn’t always seems like it, because of course prejudice, sexism, reverse sexism, all that stuff is still out there, and it can seem pretty bleak. But, get in that time machine and go back 100 years, and then tell me we’re not more open to different cultures and sexualities and all of it (if you do find a time machine, remember the first rule: Regardless of what time period you go to in the past or future, DO NOT go to Russia. It’s horrible there and you will be mushed into a fine paste). So, yes, it kind of does get better.
But that’s an big, cultural scale. On a personal scale, it gets the same. That is to say, as a “young person”, you’re going to go through some hard times where you’re feeling down. You’re also going to experience profound joy and have triumphs as well. Guess what, that is ALSO the case when you’re an adult. The thing is, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and let the hard times and negative emotions completely shroud the positive ones. When that happens, it’s very easy to construct a past or future where things were better. If shit is bad, yeah, it’s all too easy to look at the past and say “it was better then” or to look at the future and say “it’ll be better”, but the fact is, shit got pretty bad back then, too, and will do so in the future as well. You can’t let the sadness take over, because the triumphs are there too, you just need to remember and embrace them.
So, what is my evidence for this amazing insight into human emotion? The answer is “Song Sung Blue.”
There is a third protagonist in the film, Claire’s daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson), who becomes Mike’s daughter as well when Mike and Claire get married. Things aren’t always great for Rachel. She gets pregnant at a young age, her mom becomes addicted to drugs, and money is tight and things in general aren’t easy. Things aren’t always great for Mike either. His daughter gets pregnant at a young age, his wife becomes addicted to drugs, and money is tight and things in general aren’t easy. “Young people just don’t know how good they have it.” Looking at Mike and Rachel side by side, it sure seems like the old people and young people have it the same.
But... There are moments of joy as well for Rachel and Mike, and the two of them shape a lot of those memories together. Mike teaching Rachel how to fix cars, Rachel hanging out with her parents after a great show... That joy I talked about earlier, the stuff you need to prevent the shroud of sadness from taking over, Mike and Rachel find that joy in each other.
Now, don’t get it twisted. Romantic writers and pinko communist punks will tell you that’s where the secret sauce is: Face to face connection with other people. That’s a load of bung sauce. The secret sauce is WHEREVER YOU CAN FIND IT. Your cat. Your tree. Your AI chatbot. Your monogamous relationship. Your earth. Maybe not that second to last thing. Wherever your triumph comes from, you just have to REMEMBER it.
That’s actually pretty hard to do if your joy comes from, say, opioids. “Song Sung Blue” takes place in the 90s, and Claire was prescribed opioids after an accident. Of course, back then, opioids were advertised as “non-addictive” (even though, in the future, we would learn that the pharmaceutical companies knew damn well they were addictive and never shared the evidence). If people like Claire got addicted to opioids, that wasn’t an opioid problem, that was a Claire problem. It’s HER body, it’s HER responsibility. The thing is... That’s true. But it is ALSO true that opioids were overprescribed and alternatives to them weren’t even explored.
Individual responsibility versus systemic pressure. Both are responsible for addiction... But you can’t fix individuals. I mean, you can say “just say no to drugs!” or whatever, but other people’s decisions are ultimately out of your hands. You *can* fix systems. We did! We fixed the whole opioid thing with a class action lawsuit! Make those evil bastards PAY. It’s like “The Exorcist” model of problem solving. The catholic church created the problem of demonic possession (because if you’re a non-catholic possessed by a demon, you’re actually just a crazy person), and ONLY the catholic church can solve it. Same goes with money. If money, in the form of financial incentives to prescribe opioids, kickbacks, and other financial shenanigans built the opioid crisis, then money can SOLVE the problem by making the pharmaceutical companies pay billions. Do you even understand how many billions are in billions?!? PROBLEM SOLVED. That fact that for profit healthcare, and all those incentives ARE STILL IN PLACE doesn’t mean anything, because they PAID THAT MONEY.
Watching Claire gets addicted to drugs that were sold as “non addictive” pissed me off. Even today, pharmaceutical companies and conservative dipshits will blame addiction on individual responsibility (which is partially true), and place NONE of the blame on institutional pressure that you can actually try to fix (which is also true, but is ignored).
But ultimately (I have a blanket spoiler warning, but here I will issue a specific spoiler warning that I am about to talk about the end of movie) “Song Sung Blue” comes down to that “blue” feeling, and whether it’s more powerful than the joy of Neil Diamond. Turns out, it’s not. It’s not a coincidence that, after his greatest show, Mike passes away. What is more impactful: The joy created by his incredible performance, or the tragedy of his death? Those two things are simply... Potent examples of the cycle that everybody goes through. For his family, our last images are them remembering Mike with love. Remembered and holding on to the happiness he brought, even in the face of tragedy. Of course, having the music of the jewish elvis, Neil Diamond, front and center will help a lot with that whole “take your joy where you can get it” idea. Even if the song is sung blue, it’s coming up (cracklin) rosie.
By the way, since I randomly waited until the end of the review to talk about the music of Neil Diamond when discussing a movie that’s about a Neil Diamond tribute band, I do have to mention “the scene”. Just about every movie about musicians has that scene where the band or singer performs, and everything clicks into place, and the die is cast, we see and hear the magic bloom right in front of us. In “Song Sung Blue”, that scene is when Mike and Claire first get together to rehearse their new act, and they perform “Cherry Cherry” together. I ain’t gonna lie, I got chills. Turns out Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson sound absolutely phenomenal together. I don’t buy soundtracks anymore, and I already have an extensive Neil Diamond collection #humblebrag, but if I were to purchase a soundtrack I might actually get “Song Sung Blue” just to get the Jackman/Hudson versions of these Neil Diamond hits. They’re that good.
By the way, I’m sure I don’t need to insult my audience by explicitly saying that, if you’re not a fan of Neil Diamond, you might not enjoy a movie about a tribute band to him that’s full of his music. So consider that unsaid.
7/10