Some movies contain deep insights about the human condition, profound meanings or thoughts, and others don't but people will look deeply and try and find them in order to try and feel about something like others say they should (esp. critics); this is one of the latter.
Duvall plays Mac, a former country singing star. He is left one night by a fellow drunk who fights with him over a bottle and knocks him out, at this tiny little motel in the middle of nowhere and after sleeping it off, asks if the room is paid.
One things leads to another and after working off the bill for the owner, Rosa Lee, who lives there with her son, Sonny, she lets him keep working, and he stays off the bottle, and then eventually Mac, without so much as him and Rosa Lee shaking hands, let alone kissing or showing ANY sort of romantic feelings for one another, let alone the LEAST little bit of chemistry for one another, makes a pathetic excuse for a proposal to her and they're then married. But we never see this marriage, or any chemistry between them happen after they're married.
Betty Buckley plays his ex-wife country singing star, Dixie, who sings his songs but hates him, Ellen Barkin is his estranged 18 year old daughter Sue Ann who comes to visit him, a country group wants him to come see them play somewhere but never gives him their name (but they come back later and he agrees to let them record one of his songs, then eventually sing with them).
The only thing we hear Sonny talk about is is dad who died in Vietnam; no other insight is given to his character. As Mac is making a sort of a very small comeback, Sue Ann is killed in an automobile accident caused by her newly-married husband. Dixie is beside herself at the funeral.
Mac talks with Rosa Lee afterward while working outside the motel, saying why wasn't it him who died (as he was in a big accident years before), and not her. He says he doesn't understand a damn thing.
He also says the ONE great line in this movie: "You see, I don't trust happiness. I never did, I never will." That ONE LINE got him an Oscar for this INCREDIBLY slow-moving, quiet movie where nothing is really shown about ANY of the characters (though Mac can be READ, a bit), no background, him and his wife (his third, as we find out, as does his wife, after they are married) and their son, his stepson, life a life without ANYTHING revealed about it or them.
Their life comes off as so unbearably dull it would drive most people to desperation.
It's a quiet movie that says nothing.
She sings at the choir.
Sonny talks about his dad dying in Vietnam.
It's an incredibly BORING, EMPTY movie.
At the end of the movie, Mac brings home a football and him and Sonny pass it to each other, play with it. And then it's THE END.
I can't believe this movie is rated so high, a movie where nothing happens (the way the things written above happen are without any insights into why, without any buildup, NOTHING). This was made as a quiet movie. Fine. But don't tell me there's any deep meaning here in these barely-drawn-out characters, or tell me that THIS is a great movie, or even decent one (no WONDER this did horribly both at test screenings and when released theatrically). This movie is NOT entertainment, NOT deep, not even a good story by any means.
AVOID.
Or watch it, and waste an hour and a half, and wonder afterward what the fuss is about. Duvall sings some Lefty Frizzell songs; one, called It Hurts To Face Reality is pretty good, though Duvall is a great actor, just a decent singer at best; Buckley fairs better; too bad the movie as a whole doesn't.
Duvall's acting is fair but there's no story here; he's played MUCH better parts, but then, the Academy is notorious for giving great actors awards not for their best movies but for others as compensation.
