I Saw the Light

I Saw the Light (2016) is a biographical drama you can watch online on iFILM. Directed by Marc Abraham, it charts the short, combustible life of Hank Williams — the Alabama-born singer who reshaped country music before dying at twenty-nine on the back seat of a car, New Year's Day 1953. Tom Hiddleston takes the lead.

Williams hit the Nashville circuit in the late 1940s already a fully-formed talent, writing classics faster than he could record them. His marriage to fellow songwriter Audrey Mae (Elizabeth Olsen) was the engine of his creative life and also its main wreckage: collaboration, jealousy, infidelity, and eventually divorce. The drinking never stopped. Neither did the music.

Hiddleston spent months learning Williams' guitar style and trained his voice to handle the songs live — no vocal substitute. Bradley Whitford plays producer Fred Rose. The film runs 123 minutes and refuses to turn its subject into a saint. Watch I Saw the Light (2016) online on iFILM.