The Equation, My Equation:
Action (x/3) + Acting (x/2) + Direction (x/2) + Script (x/1) + Special Effects (x/1) + Spectacle (x/1) = x/10
INTRODUCTION
Think back on the fables and religious parables that you know. The characters are easy enough. Perhaps not their exact names, but more-so the titles like ‘The Good Samaritan’. Now, what happens after the fables or parables end? Where do the characters go? How do we find them today?
Rae (Christina Ricci) is introduced to the audience via a passionate love making session with Ronnie (Justin Timberlake). After it’s over, Ronnie puts on his military uniform, pauses, and runs to the sink to throw-up. Rae tries to console him. Suddenly, Rae starts convulsing and moaning. She grabs her head and moans, “No, no, no,” as if she’s willing a disease to end. It’s the dirty South, and these are your modern archetypes which summon ‘The Good Samaritan.
BLACK SNAKE MOAN (2006)
ACTION: 2/3
Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) sits down at a local bar. The other flies reminisce about how he used to make everyone dance with his guitar. He shrugs it off, and then is asked to behave as his brother enters. Here begins the difficulties of applying Christian doctrine to every surrounding. Lazarus pins his brother to a pool-table, breaks a beer bottle next to his head, and recites biblical passages about Abel marking Cain. “I’ll mark you!” screams Lazarus over and over.
See, the former blues genius and now poor farmer has seen his wife run off with his brother. As Ronnie ships out, Rae walks the streets. She has obviously once been a prostitute. She wonders into a house party wearing her best pair of skimpy shorts and a crop-top. “How much to get me fucked up?” she asks a local dealer. He obliges and Rae ends up drunk, drugged, and left for dead in a ditch.
Lazarus finds her and sees this as a sign from God. In her drugged state, Rae begins to mumble dialog similar to Lazarus’ unfaithful wife. Is it a curse? Lazarus decides to cure her and to remover her wickedness. He runs to the shed and chains Rae to the radiator. Lazarus speaks at her with the ferocity of a Southern Preacher. He barks the commandments of the Bible at her and asks her how she can let anyone walk all over her. The old Mississippi ways then grasp and weave their way in. Suddenly, Lazarus is playing the blues to get Rae to sleep, and Rae is likening herself to a donkey as a slave. “If I twist my ankle? You gonna put me down?”
All of this culminates in Lazarus leading the whole town in a bar stomp of a blues jam. Rae is throbbing and crawling about the bar, and Lazarus (as only Jackson can do!) is preaching through the microphone about love lost and the ‘tude one can only get through living. The pinnacle of reverse-slavery, curing demons, and the power of music is anything but boring!
Over two hours of the above is either going to be enough, or just plain overload. However, parables find the ears they want.
ACTING: 2/2
Samuel L. Jackson looks his age and he plays the good kidnapper, the anti-hero with a guitar, as a ferocious yet senile master of pain. Watching Ricci slink around with no understanding of how to live isn’t easy, but she loses herself in the role and one can’t believe it’s actually the little girl from The Addam’s Family! This truly is one of Jackson’s finer performances, and Ricci sucks the purity and decency out of any room or person she encounters. This is, of course, except for Lazarus and his guitar. Didn’t his namesake live forever?
DIRECTING: 1/2
Craig Brewer wrote and directed Black Snake Moan, and it is clearly his vision. Although Lazarus is chained down by his own demons, and Rae completely engulfed, Brewer doesn’t make this a cake-walk. The modern retelling of ‘The Good Samaritan’ isn’t cutesy, spoon-fed jargon. These are poor, uneducated people trying to sift through the old ways while in he twilight of their golden years. Their ways of dealing with new young trash is fascinating.
As outlined above though, how does the parable of ‘The Good Samaritan’ end? Here, that is also the difficult question. Is Rae cured? Did her demons return Lazarus to the dead souls inside the bar? The point is to not care, and to simply let the blues cure you. If you can, kudos! If not, then the whole film may be a chore.
SCRIPT: 1/1
Retelling old parables in modern Mississippi isn’t easy. Aside from the Coen brothers’ Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?, who has succeeded. Here, Brewer’s script succeeds, though some would argue that Lazarus’ return to the darkside isn’t happy. Well, neither was ‘The Little Mermaid’ when she turned to foam.
SPECIAL EFFECTS: 0/1
There are no major special effects, but the smaller budget and the grit given the actors via the re-telling are ammunition enough. Watching Rae slink everywhere without shoes and wearing only her panties turns some off immediately. For others, the ones willing to put in the time to watch the parable play out in a new, modern setting, the redemption of Rae is as rewarding as discovering Miles Davis for the first time. In short, life ain’t always pretty but its demons can be swayed like a cobra.
SPECTACLE: 1/1
Even the cover of the DVD, which has Lazarus holding a chained Rae like a dog, raises eyebrows. Curing a druggie and a prostitute of her wickedness isn’t easy. What is the ultimate cure though? Is it the blues, the Bible,
or watching others tug and pull at their demonic chains until they snap? The metaphors and re-telling are powerful, bold, and completely over-the-top. If you manage to make it through, it does stay with you.
OVERALL: 7/10, 70%
Black Snake Moan is worth it. For some, the over-the-top antics are completely void. If you do manage to make it through, and if you can pick up on all the keen metaphors of history and parables, then you’ll be amused and may even be laughng at the old man Lazarus’ classic ways. Black Snake Moan is a guilty pleasure centered on the blues and the bible!
