BLACK SNAKE MOAN
Paramount Vantage
Rated RSTARRING:
Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci and Justin Timberlake
THE VERDICT:
While the acting stays above average, the film’s script takes too many unneeded turns, making this “Snake” a stick in the mud.
2/4 stars
“Black Snake Moan” begins with a bit of hard-luck prophecy from legendary bluesman Son House. In black-and-white archival footage, House explains that there will only ever be “one kind of blues,” one that always tells a sad story “between male and female in love.”
Rae (Christina Ricci) is in love with Ronnie (Justin Timberlake). Ronnie, a serious, nervous young man whose stomach gets upset around gunfire, has just shipped off to army training, leaving Rae alone. Rae isn’t very good at being alone.
When she’s alone she gets “that sickness,” an uncontrollable itch for comfort and control that she repeatedly scratches in ill-advised ways, with buckets of booze, fistfuls of pills and roll after sweaty roll in the country hay and with partners as uncaring as a violent redneck racist and a crack dealer.
One particularly bad encounter leaves Rae beaten and unconscious on the road near the farm of Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson), a God-fearing smalltime farmer and former blues player with a world of his own troubles.
When Rae awakens in his house and passionately tries to kiss him, replete with sound effects of locusts and rattlesnakes, Lazarus sees it as a sign from God, a challenge to be met by a penitent servant going through hard times. “God seen fit to put you in my path,” he tells her, “and I aim to cure you of your wickedness … right or wrong, I’m gonna suffer you.”
This is where “Black Snake Moan” takes a turn for the bizarre. Lazarus’ idea of “suffering” Rae is holding Rae hostage in his home, securing her tightly to a radiator with chains unfurled from his rusty tool shed. He gives the chains enough slack for Rae to roam about the house but not enough for her to get past the front yard. When she tries to run, the chains snap her flat on her back, and Lazarus drags her forcibly back inside.
“I do got sin in me,” Lazarus admits, but his exorcism of Rae’s demons may be his absolution. His friend R.L., a pastor with his own on-again-off-again battles with the man upstairs, preaches to Lazarus and Rae that heaven is more than the promise of an afterlife; it’s a moral place you have to find for yourself on earth. Rae appreciates the idealism, but she can’t seem to control herself in her own pursuit of it and sees no point in hollow repenting.
One weakness of “Black Snake Moan” is that all of this Biblical wrestling with demons never plays out quite as interestingly as it should. Nor do any of the film’s more evocative thematic strands. Writer-director Craig Brewer (2005’s electric “Hustle and Flow”) intentionally sets up the main conflict of a noble black man, a farmer and artist, taming a white she-devil, but he doesn’t seem to want to push the hot button he’s presented himself. The narrative is potentially rich with arguments on religion, race and sex that never get fully developed.
Amid all the sensationalism is the gentleness of a fable. Despite his questionable methods, Lazarus’ heart is in the right place. Though he adds fresh wounds to Rae’s body, he dresses them with Vaseline, cooks her dinner and buys her new, far more modest clothing. He introduces her to his small circle of friends, and the warmth and sense of community are welcome to her, however alien.
This is a film oddly at war with itself, most relaxed in its pulp instincts and allegorical underpinnings yet determined to negate those entertaining traits with a compassion and human realism that it wears with shaggy discomfort. Brewer’s got a sure hand at faux-’70s exploitation, using garish yellow title text and one well-placed color saturation to strong effect and violence of all kinds, from physical to mental to verbal, but his stylistic flourishes hit a brick wall as the script devolves into too-familiar twists of redemption and stone-faced, dimestore psychology straight out of “The Three Faces of Eve.”
Brewer’s perhaps best at evoking small details, especially a palpable sense of setting. A Memphis native, he’s at home in this off-the-map scrap pile of gravel, trailers, pickups and greasy spoons, the quietly segregated stores and bars; he nails the grit without resorting to clich. A dying music club central to the story is every bit the real thing, from the unadorned plywood walls to the neon Pabst sign inviting drinkers inside.
The title “Black Snake Moan” comes from an age-old Blind Lemon Jefferson lament that is neither as exciting nor lewd as the promotional material for the film suggests. It is, however, a fine, mournful rumination on loss of innocence in relationships and dealing with ugliness in one’s life that can’t be easily swept under a rug. Jackson, who does his own singing, offers a defiant, powerful rendition of the song, wailing away as he strums his guitar with increasing confidence, howling like “King Lear” against a raging thunderstorm outside as Ricci clings to his leg, vulnerable and afraid.
It’s an iconic moment, one of several mustered by Brewer and his actors, who all do mostly fine by characters whose U-turns and changes of heart come more easily than they probably should. Jackson, paunchy and gray-bearded, plays world-weary to nice effect, unleashing his signature lightning-in-a-bottle righteous fury incrementally and only when actually necessary. S. Epatha Merkerson radiates warmth and good humor in an underwritten role as a pharmacist who goes out of her way to be kind to Lazarus, and John Cothran Jr. all but steals the picture as Rev. R.L.
Ricci is also especially strong, throwing her body and soul into a difficult, mostly physical role. She slinks and writhes with animalistic abandon, in various forms of undress, in a performance of great fervor and no vanity. Yet it’s not all sound and fury. Watch the way Rae, haunted by memories of childhood abuse, wraps herself as tightly as she can in her chains in an effort to fall asleep; it’s her way of feeling some sort of contact at that moment, and it’s the quietest moment her restless spirit ever gets.
But the script takes too many liberties with its characters, putting them through seemingly arbitrary changes of heart simply because the rigors of formula demand it. The country-cute dialogue (“Collar that dog, boy!”) and menacing soundtrack twangs feel blandly pre-processed. Late-in-the-game documentary footage builds up a climactic conflict that never comes with combatants who aren’t evenly matched, a final act problem that is never overcome and that obscures a winning message that personal insanity has nothing to do with one’s capacity for love.
“Black Snake Moan” is ultimately just an endearing mess. Even when his film is floundering, though, Brewer’s style and specificity of vision shine through the cracks with the promise of better cinematic ventures in his future. His is a voice worth nurturing, even if his latest is merely a catchy blues riff in search of a story worth telling.