Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1980
Running Time	119:05
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Language Select Then Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Michael Apted
Studio Distributor	Universal Pictures Home Video	Starring	Sissy Spacek Tommy Lee Jones Beverly D'Angelo Levon Helm
Case	?
RPI	$19.95	Music	Owen Bradley

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.85:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English Spanish French German Italian	Smoking	Yes, a mining town, people smoke.
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, action during opening credits.

    Coal Miner's Daughter is a biography of the popular Country and Western singer, Loretta Lynn. I have never been a big fan of Hollywood biographies, as they are often more fiction than fact, but this is one of the better examples. It is superbly acted by Sissy Spacek in the title role. She won the 1981 Oscar for "Best Actress in a Leading Role" for this performance, and thoroughly deserved it (she also won the Golden Globe and numerous other awards). Not only does she convincingly portray the singer from the age of 13 to her early 30s, but she also does the singing herself and does it well. The film itself garnered another 6 Oscar nominations that year, including one for Best Film.

    The supporting cast is very strong with Tommy Lee Jones excellent as Loretta's beau, Doolittle. The drummer for The Band, Levon Helm, is also effective as Loretta's coal-mining father. The director, Michael Apted, appears well suited to character-driven films (he also directed Gorillas in the Mist and the "Up" series for the BBC; 28 Up, 35 Up and so on). He uses a lot of ambient lighting in the film, and hand-held cameras, which add to the feel of veracity.

    The film itself begins in the depressing coal mining region of Kentucky where Loretta Webb grew up in the 1930s and 40s. She soon meets returned soldier Doolittle Lynn, and they begin a romance despite the fact that Loretta is only 13 years old. One thing leads to another, and by the time she is 18, Loretta (now Loretta Lynn) has 4 children. Her husband buys her a guitar for an anniversary present, as he says: "I like the way you sing". After she learns to play the thing he convinces her to perform at a local honky-tonk (around the 48:00 mark). She is a great success and her rise to stardom begins.

    The second half of the film chronicles the rest of her early career, including her relationship with country legend Patsy Cline (well performed and sung by Beverley D'Angelo). Doolittle has problems dealing with Loretta's stardom, and their relationship problems are sensitively handled while giving the film some needed dramatic moments.

    There is on-screen action during the opening credits, and during the closing credits scenes from the film accompany each of the key actor's names. Stills from the film accompany the rest of the closing credits.

Video

    I can only describe the video on this DVD as average. It will not annoy you when you view it, but it is not something you would show to someone to demonstrate to them why they should buy a DVD player either. The picture is dull, with none of the vibrancy associated with more modern releases. I'm not going to drag out the old excuse about the age of the film, either - many films of the 1950s look better than this after restoration, and some basic cleanup work should be more common in films from the 1970s and 1980s.

    The film is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced, which is the way it was released in the cinema.

    The picture is clear and reasonably sharp, though there is some loss of detail in the shadows. The colours are drab, reflecting the colours of the coal mining valley. They do not pick up much, even when Loretta leaves Kentucky. Part of this is due to the use of ambient lighting, which is very effective in an early scene when Doolittle walks Loretta home at night holding a burning torch. It is less effective in other night scenes where the tonal range of the film is challenged.

    Minor artefacts are sprinkled through the film, but they are generally small and do not detract from the viewing. Negative artefacts can be seen at 0:49 and 3:29 and the worst two positive artefacts at 20:06 and 38:26. There is also some occasional pixelization, and what appears to be dot crawl in the closing credits.

    The subtitles are actually English for the Hearing Impaired. They drop a few occasional words but are reasonably accurate. The disc is dual-layered, but I did not notice a layer change. There were frequent fades between scenes which could have easily masked any change.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio transfer is an undistinguished 2.0 mix, reflecting the original cinema mono release. At times it is harsh on the ears, but the music comes across well.

    There are 5 audio tracks on the disc. I listened to the English 2.0 track, and part of the French 2.0 track (the disc also includes Spanish, German and Italian language tracks). The foreign language tracks must have taken a lot of work. As in most musicals, the spoken language was French, but the songs are in English. As Loretta was frequently humming fragments of songs in the film, the French soundtrack would jump from her English humming to French if someone else in the room spoke, then back to English when she started singing again.

    The dialogue was at times difficult to hear, which made it hard to pick up some of the meaning, especially with the heavy back-country accents early in the film. The approach to realism used by Michael Apted also contributed to this difficulty. In one dance scene (at 10:35) the on-screen characters were having difficulty hearing one another due to the music in the hall. For the viewer, this was even more difficult as it was all just one wall of sound.

    Audio sync was fine in this transfer, including in the musical numbers. The music itself was either Loretta Lynn (Spacek) or Patsy Cline (D'Angelo), apart from a few other country tracks in the earlier part of the film. Owen Bradley is credited with musical supervision.

    Since this is a 2.0 mono mix there was no surround presence, and the subwoofer only saw limited use as the bass in the musical tracks. With its abundance of music, the film would have benefited from a 5.1 remix as another optional audio track.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    The disc has no extras. This is quite regrettable as it could have been a much better presentation with some details about Loretta Lynn's life for the uninitiated, or perhaps even some performances from Loretta herself.

Menu

    The menu is static. There are 18 scenes available from the scene selection menu.

    The Region 4 version of this DVD misses out on:

• An audio commentary with Sissy Spacek and director Michael Apted.
• A retrospective look at the film with Tommy Lee Jones.
• An interview with Loretta Lynn and Michael Apted
• A 1989 AFI celebration of the film with President George Bush (that one must be worth a laugh).

    It looks as if the local buyer has been shafted yet again. While the studios continue to exhort us to buy local DVDs and support regional coding in the name of fair play for local distributors, they should do the right thing and release films in Region 4 with a full feature set.

    The Region 1 release is the preferred version.

    Overall, this is an enjoyable film, presented with average picture and sound on yet another bare bones disc. The Region 1 version appears to contain a selection of interesting extras so that once again the local buyer is being badly mistreated.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall