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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 10/18/2007 : 12:10:03
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Black Snake Moan
What a strange film! One might almost call it a parable.
Black Snake Moan is a Blind Lemon Jefferson blues title, and the film opens with archive footage of the legendary Son House explaining the relationship between The Blues and Love. He makes a re-appearance about half-way through, continuing his exposition.
Set in white trashland whose residents indulge in all the modern escapes on offer, and whose black neighbours turn to the pragmatic morality of their church for the good life, Writer/director Craig Brewer presents yet another unexpected pairing between two unlikely people against a backdrop of sleaze and deprivation.
In this case the woman, Rae, [a waif-like Christina Ricci], having survived paternal sexual abuse, is coping within a self-made hell predicated on nymphomania. There aren't that many films about this complex pathology, particularly ones which don't ridicule or trivialize it.
Rae's sexual consummations have been somewhat tamed by providing almost maternal solace to troubled boyfriend Ronnie, plagued with doubts about his manhood. As played by Justin Timberlake he's unable to convince us, particularly since the screenplay fails his character with little beneath the surface.
How Rae winds up in the platonic care of the much older Samuel L Jackson as the recently divorced Lazarus - who apparently considers this his finest performance - provides the meat of the story.
With Ronnie off testing himself in the US Army, Rae's obsessive behaviour lands her unconscious and beaten at the side of the road near Laz's small-holding. Not only does he rescue her, tending to her bruises, but he takes it on himself to rescue her spiritually as well.
To accomplish this, given her condition and level of anger and rebelliousness, he chooses to chain her up. Oh, she's got plenty of room to move about his humble home and even go a ways outside. But she's his prisoner, no two ways about it.
Their evolving relationship, which never jumps the Temptation Gap, presumably heals them both.
These are interesting and extremely complex themes and I won't pretend Brewer always handles them with the depth of understanding they merit, and occasionally he strays over the line of gratuitous gawping. But neither does he present easy answers, and just when you're expecting a predictable outcome, he turns things around another way.
The ballast of the local streetwise preacher sews together the emotional development of the characters with the kind of down-home analysis that goes down as easily as the tasty suppers offered by Laz.
The story actually involves three people, but only two get Brewer's total attention. The film would have been more effective if Ronnie's problems were more integrated, and we're left to take it on trust why Rae's ability to help him control himself is so potent.
Do they actually share similar childhood traumas? It's never clarified. Given Jackson's box office presence it must have made economic sense to concentrate on Laz's relationship with Rae, but that really just draws things out.
I hope Brewer continues to mature as a story-teller, because he's clearly passionate and concerned with what's vital about relationships. In that sense he shares a lot with John Sayles.
But he needs to borrow some of Sayles's stronger moral authority, and to make more cogent links between the personal and the political. In short to recognize that people don't behave in a vacuum, no matter how restricted their lives.
The film is definitely worth seeing, though, and it will surprise you. Not least as a vehicle for Jackson's excellent bottle-neck guitar and blues performance.
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Downtown 
"Welcome back, Billy Buck"
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Posted - 10/18/2007 : 13:56:47
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I found this film immensely disappointing. It had good music (I absolutely love blues, particularly country blues, and ESPECIALLY Delta blues and swamp blues), but it didn't tell a story very well. The ending seemed cheap and abrupt, although I have to admit that the "both of them still have all the same problems, but now she has the strength to get them through it" message was at least more realistic than your typical Hollywood happy ending.
Even the soundtrack isn't really worth picking up, because Sam Jackson has the soul for blues but he doesn't really have the talent. |
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 10/18/2007 : 15:51:11
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I actually liked Justin Timberlake in this a lot. I mean, no, he's not quite an actor yet, but simply casting pretty boy J.T. against an older, infinitely manlier Samuel L. Jackson says all we need to know about the character.
Where I think this movie fails is in never acknowledging the wrongness of a black man deciding to chain up a white woman in his home. It may look wrong, says the movie, but there's nothing wrong about it. Jackson is just trying to help out Ricci. He's not trying to hurt her or have his way with her -- he's just helping out. Jackson's character has his own dreams and problems beyond Ricci, of course, and thank God for it, but he still comes across as one of Spike Lee's hated "magical Negros" who only exist to help out white people.
A far better take on the same material, I think, would be to put some anger back into that chain. By tying up the town harlot, he's actually trying to punish his cheatin' wife by proxy. That would put the heat back into it and make it a more complicated, and far more interesting story, without really altering the characters.
I liked the ending, but I still have doubts about the bonds of marriage as a strong stabilizing force in this particular case. |
Edited by - MisterBadIdea on 10/18/2007 19:19:25 |
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Demisemicenturian 
"Four ever European"
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Posted - 10/18/2007 : 21:30:38
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| I really enjoyed it: although I cannot disagree with the drawbacks highlighted, they didn't trouble me at the time. I get an odd kick when a film somehow just doesn't seem like a proper film. This has happened to me a few times this year, e.g. with Goya's Ghosts. |
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silly 
"That rabbit's DYNAMITE."
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Posted - 10/19/2007 : 14:57:55
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I loved the movie; but I'm a big Ricci and S. Jackson fan, so I'm a bit biased.
Justin? It could have been just about anybody in that role. I do not think that was inspired casting, in the least. But, like somebody else said, he didn't have a lot of role to work with.
I didn't care too much for the ending - seemed a bit abrupt - but sitting now, I can't really think of a more appropriate ending.
Perhaps I liked it because it's a subject that is hardly mainstream - as dysfunctional as families can be, movies tend to look at substance abuse or adultery, and pretend that these are simple problems that don't spread to other facets of life. |
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damalc 
"last watched: Sausage Party"
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Posted - 04/12/2009 : 17:16:03
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| i saw BSM a while ago and don't know why i just thought of this but i keep thinking Lazarus is an old Jules Winnfield getting in another adventure, you know, like Caine on Kung Fu. i guess i'm going to think that about every future Jackson role. |
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Black Snake Moan - spoilers
