A tortured scream from the American soul
Black Snake Moan more fun than cow-tipping
DYLAN FERGUSON STAFF
COURTESY OF PARAMOUNT
Directed by Billy Craig Brewer
♥♥♥♥ out of 5
As the opening credits roll, Christina Ricci, as Rae, is sauntering down the middle of a country road, smoking a cigarette, wearing denim cut-offs and the bare remnants of a grey T-shirt. The T-shirt depicts two fluttering flags, the Star-Spangled Banner over her right breast, and the Confederate Cross over her left, with, of course, two crossed Colt pistols nestled in between. A combine rolling up from behind honks at her to get out of the way, and Rae, in slow-mo — that really cocky kind of slow-mo, like in the intro of Reservoir Dogs — gives it the finger without turning her head or missing a drag of her Camel. That’s when the title Black Snake Moan drops onto the screen.
There’s something incredibly all- American about Black Snake Moan, and I think the opening title sequence is a perfect example of the film’s attitude. I don’t mean “all-American” as curse word, either, because the down-South posturing it brings to the table is very compelling. This movie is brash, cocky, unrepentant, twisted by insuppressible sexual desires and coloured by the lingering stain from some of the nastier passages of the Bible. From sea to shining motherfucking sea.
Part sexed-up pulp yarn, part twisted morality tale, the third feature from writer/director Craig Brewer transplants us from the urban hiphop milieu of his Hustle & Flow to the seedy, sultry Deep South. Y’all. (His first film was the little-seen The Poor and Hungry). In some regards, Moan exists in the same realm of strongwilled American poor, of battered women and frustrated men, as Hustle & Flow, but Brewer’s characters are no longer interested in achieving success. Instead, Moan’s Suthin’ folk are interested, if not obsessed, by wrestling the awful, screaming demon stirring within them. That demon is the “black snake,” and its vocal release is the “black snake moan,” in the language of the blues.
Brewer has chosen to tell his story not only in the blues lexicon, but in the smoky world of blues mythology. To enforce this, the movie is narrated, sort of, by archival footage of blues legend Son House. If you’ve ever seen that guy talk, let alone sing the blues (perhaps in Murray Lerner’s film Festival) then you know what a treat this is.
Samuel L. Jackson, the great actor and celebrated reptile-rights activist who recently shocked the news media by declaring he would heretofore only act in films with the word “snake” in the title, plays bluesman Lazarus. Laz is a kind of shit-on, God-fearing, harddrinking, hard-glaring curmudgeon who one day finds Rae lying beaten, bloody, drugged-up and passed out at the side of the road.
Rae, as she describes it, has got the “itch.” Which, in this case, is a kind of crazed nymphomania resulting from severe abuse as a child. Psych students, please consider that this is basically pulp fiction before you start over-analyzing this dubious “condition.” At the start of the film, Rae is passionately in love with Ronnie (Justin Timberlake), but when he leaves for a tour of duty in Iraq, she throws herself at almost every man who comes her way, apparently unable to wait for her beau to bring sexy back.
When ol’ Laz finds out about Rae and her “itch,” his tortured, Bible-filled mind decides that the only course of action for him is to chain Rae halfnaked to his radiator. Not what Dr. Phil would do, perhaps, but Laz and Rae develop an intimate (though nonsexual) relationship, and the story even takes a Pygmalion turn as Laz tries to help Rae become a respectful girl.
Sound horribly immoral and sick? The movie actually has a kind of morality that, I suspect, only makes sense from an American perspective. The characters’ problems may never really be solved, and the black snake can never truly be placated, but things work out in a satisfying and strangely logical fashion. But it’s all very unusual, and the film is so unashamed about being a bizarre, smutty opera that I fell in love with it.
The steamy Southern setting, as well as the resolute characters and repressed sexuality that drive the narrative reminded me of the Tennessee Williams-Elia Kazan pictures from the ’50s, like A Streetcar Named Desire and Baby Doll. Maybe not as powerful dramatically, and certainly not as wellwritten — Brewer relies instead on a lot of visceral emotional outbursts and blues tunes to express his characters — but every bit as all-American.
Black Snake Moan is a great piece of American fiction, and one of the most entertaining movies of 2007 (am I allowed to say that in February?). And that’s something to scream about.
