Movie review: Ethan Hawke's musical biopic 'Blaze' focuses on unsung artist

“Blaze” - ★ ★ ★

The great singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt used to say there are two kinds of music: the blues and zip-a-dee-doo-dah. Both are on full, florid display in “Blaze,” an absorbing, illuminating film about the late musician Blaze Foley.

Foley isn't a household name; he's best known as the subject of Van Zandt's song “Blaze's Blues” and Lucinda Williams' “Drunken Angel.” But Foley comes charmingly, maddeningly into his own by way of a masterful title performance by Arkansas-Philly musician Ben Dickey.

Inspired by “Living in the Woods in a Tree,” a memoir by Foley's wife, Sybil Rosen, “Blaze” chronicles the couple's love affair, Foley's promising but often self-sabotaging career and, finally, his death in 1989.

Directed by Ethan Hawke from a script he wrote with Rosen, “Blaze” is structured around a radio interview in which Van Zandt (played to near perfection by Austin guitarist Charlie Sexton) and a composite sideman character named Zee (Josh Hamilton) recall their colleague's influence. Toggling between the interview and flashbacks to Foley's final show, which turned into the recording “Live at the Austin Outhouse,” Hawke tells the story in impressionistic swoops.

For the most part, the story is one of once-charmed, now-wistful romance, as a younger Foley falls in love with Rosen, acted with down-to-earth equanimity by Alia Shawkat. From the self-described treehouse in Georgia, they move to Austin, the better for Foley to be discovered.

He is. But he also discovers some things himself, including a penchant for alcohol, cocaine and carousing; the strains of the road; and a love-hate relationship with audiences. Hawke brings a natural affinity for music to “Blaze,” in which he gracefully integrates Foley's songs into the narrative.

Anyone who's seen the terrific rom-com “Juliet, Naked,” in which Hawke appears as an iconic folk singer, will appreciate the karmic balance of his making a movie about just the kind of storied cult figure the earlier movie gently lampoons. “Blaze” fairly stands accused of declining to probe the myth too harshly. But it possesses the kind of raw authenticity and ambered nostalgia that fans of Foley, Van Zandt and their peers often worship to the point of parody.

That's thanks to Hawke's sensitive direction and his wisdom in casting Dickey, Shawkat and Sexton. (As for the musical performances, they are eerily on-point.)

We've seen the story of rock 'n' roll self-destruction before. We'll see it again in “A Star Is Born.” But “Blaze” revisits a familiar tale in a way that's both ancient and new, introducing viewers to an artist who deserves to be memorialized.

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Starring: Ben Dickey, Alia Shawkat, Charlie Sexton, Josh Hamilton

Directed by: Ethan Hawke

Other: An IFC Films release. In limited release. Rated R for language, sexual situations and drug use. 128 minutes