Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
Steamy
Twangy
(Black Snake Moan, 6/18/07)
By Nicholas Nicastro
Craig
Brewer's Black Snake Moan got its first-run theatrical release
earlier this year. It landed with a thud, earning less than $10 million
at the box office despite the presence of Samuel L. Jackson, the guy
that helped that other snake movie, Snakes on a Plane, gross
four times as much. There's no accounting for taste: if you can get
past the preposterous premise, get past the porn title, get past Justin
Timberlake in the cast, and somehow get on Brewer's wavelength, Moan
is far more appealing than a plane full of snakes. If you can't, there
just may not be any blues in you.
Down in backcountry Tennessee, two
very different people find themselves on the wrong side of heartache.
Lazarus (Jackson) is a truck-farmer and former bluesman who loses his
wife to his two-timing younger brother. Rae (Christina Ricci) is a hard-drinking
nymphomaniac who can only keep herself under control in the presence
of her fragile boyfriend, Ronnie (Timberlake). When Ronnie goes off
to train for the National Guard, Rae goes on a sex-and-drug-fueled bender
that lands her bruised and unconscious on the road outside Lazarus'
house.
Lazarus pledges to nurse her back
to sanity, but at the price of some pretty tough love. Without giving
away too much, his "cure" involves chaining her panty-clad
body to a radiator until she learns self-respect. "Right or wrong,
you gonn' mind me," he thunders. "Like Jesus Christ said,
'Imma suffa' you. IMMA SUFFA' YOU!"
If the racial politics of a black
man chaining a white woman to a radiator seem perilous, and the sexual
politics perverse, it's just as well that the nabobs of culture criticism
don't dictate which movies get made. True, the film likely would not
have gotten a civil reception if the race factor were reversed, with
Billy Bob Thornton chaining Halle Berry to a radiator. Then again, didn't
that film get made as Monster's Ball?
Writer/director Brewer (Hustle
& Flow) helps make it all work by trusting in his cast to redeem
the compassionate core of his story. Jackson is terrific at the alternately
bitter and transcendant Lazarus, dominating his bean-fields like some
Old Testament patriarch. No surprise, of course, that Jackson can pull
off this kind of sermonizing—Quentin Tarantino tapped the same
vein for Pulp Fiction, making something memorable out of Jackson's
loquacious hit man character.
Ricci is equally good in a tricky
part that veers from indulgent to abrasive but crosses neither line.
Her physical transformation for the role is frankly amazing: with her
blonde mop and stars-and-bars on her cut-off tees, she looks like a
spooky, not-funny version of Goldie Hawn. Mirabile dictu, even
Justin Timberlake rises to the occasion. The result splays itself like
exploitation but floats with the angels.
The atmosphere of Moan is
half the pleasure of it. Brewer gives Jackson ample opportunity to show
off his picking and vocals, and he appears to have talent (well, at
least according to my primitive tastes). Somewhere in the middle of
the tale, you're transported by memories of some warm afternoon you
once spent down south, sweating in that soupy air but suspecting you
like fried okra after all. Best go with the flow.
©2007 Nicholas Nicastro
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