Hank Williams doesn't seem to have been that great of a guy. He became addicted to the drink, morphine, and other painkillers as well as fathering several children, only one of which he ever married their mother and this all before his untimely death at the age of twenty-nine. While Williams may not have necessarily been the best guy (and possibly one of the worst parents) it is usually these types of people that stand to create the most interesting stories and in Williams case, write the most interesting ones as well. Before becoming popular as a singer Williams was primarily known for being one of country and westerns top songwriters. Williams penned and performed countless tunes for a radio show in his hometown of Montgomery, Alabama before securing a deal with the music publishing firm Acuff-Rose as a professional songwriter. All of that taken into consideration, one wouldn't really come to learn much of this from the Marc Abraham (Flash of Genius) biopic, I Saw the Light. Abraham's film tends to prefer only patching together a few story points in the singer's life rather than truly digging into its subject's life and finding out what really made this man tick. It's admirable that Abraham doesn't take the easy route of opening his film backstage before one of Williams last shows and using it as a framing device for a period of reflection in which the movie's told, but he also doesn't come up with an alternative way to tell us anything insightful about the man, and a movie needs to offer more than a Wikipedia page does.
