Sweet Dreams is a 1985 American Biopic about the life and career of legendary country music vocalist Patsy Cline, directed by Karel Reisz and starring Jessica Lange and Ed Harris.
The film dramatizes Virginia Patterson Hensley's (Lange) rise to fame, her performing career under the stage name she would make world famous, and her marriage to Charlie Dick (Harris). Her star power was rising exponentially when she and three others – her manager Randy Hughes (David Clennon) and fellow musicians Hawkshaw Hawkins and Cowboy Copas – were killed in a plane crash in rural Tennessee on March 5, 1963.
Unlike Coal Miner's Daughter, which focused on the life of Loretta Lynn (one of Cline's closest friends) and had Sissy Spacek performing the songs in character, this film had the non-singing Lange lip-sync her stage performances to Cline's original recordings.
Sweet Dreams was named for one of the final songs Cline recorded in her lifetime. The song was written by Don Gibson, who had one of several hit recordings of the song; Faron Young had the first charting version in 1956 and Gibson reached the top 10 in 1960, before Cline had a posthumous hit with what critics called one of her best performances. Emmylou Harris had the biggest hit version from a chart perspective, with a live recording from one of her concerts in 1976.
While the movie has its share of fans, it did gain criticism for various historical inaccuracies, notably regarding the plane crash that took Cline's life.
Tropes seen in Sweet Dreams:
- Biopic: About one of country music's most famous, talented and influential female vocalists, whose legacy continues some 60 years after her passing.
- Bring My Brown Pants: In the climatic scene, when Randy Hughes is able to restart the plane and (temporarily) averting disaster, the three passengers and Cline all joke how they peed their pants. That would soon be the least of their concerns ...
- Domestic Abuse: While dramatized and at times romanticized, the relationship between Patsy and husband Charlie was depicted as it was in real life: romantic but tempestuous. Frequently, Charlie (and at times, Patsy as well) got drunk and got into big fights that became physical.
- Hope Spot: In the flight scene where the plane stalls, Randy is finally able to get the plane re-started and everyone cheers. The celebration would be short-lived ... .
- Just Plane Wrong: Critics of Sweet Dreams point at a number of inaccuracies in the film, most notably the plane crash at the end of the film. In the movie, Hughes – after restarting the plane's engine, which had mechanical issues – attempts to steer the plane but it crashes into the side of a mountain, exploding on impact. In real life, the plane crahsed into a forest, hitting trees that ripped the plane apart on its way down, and that heavy fog limited Hughes' ability to avoid a crash.
- Last Words: In the movie, Patsy cries out "Charlie!" moments before the plane crashes into the mountainside.
- Oh, Crap!: To Cline fans, who likely knew long ago about her real-life fate, the flight scene and its outcome were foregone conclusions. It doesn't make it any less frightening to see the sheer look of terror on everyone's faces when they realize they're about to crash – and die.
