Product Details

• Actors: Harry Crews, Johnny Dowd, David Eugene Edwards, The Handsome Family, Gary Howington
• Directors: Andrew Douglas
• Writers: Steve Haisman
• Producers: Andrew Douglas, Anthony Wall, Jonathan Shoemaker, Martin Rosenbaum, Simon Crocker
• Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Homevision
• DVD Release Date: March 14, 2006
• Run Time: 82 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000E1OI8U
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #94,761 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Studio: Image Entertainment Release Date: 02/20/2007

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 133 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Worthwhile, but lacking integrity, May 20, 2006

By 

Bob Fancher (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (DVD)

My family has lived in the South since it was jungle, since before Mississippi was even a territory, much less a state. But I moved away from Mississippi thirty years ago, and from the South altogether over twenty years ago, and I have nothing good to say about the South. My criticisms of this movie, then, aren't due to wounded Southern chauvinism.

After I'd rented this movie, I knew I'd want to watch it repeatedly, so I bought it. I don't regret that decision, but the more I watch it, the more suspect the film, and its makers' intentions, become.

From the first, I knew that the film is profoundly inaccurate: to call this a mirror of the South, or a deep exploration of Southern culture, is about like saying the truth about New York City is found in the voodoo subculture of certain parts of Harlem.

But I thought that was probably a mistake of perspective, a matter of the filmmakers not knowing any better--and maybe getting taken for a ride by the Southerners. (That's something Southerners get a kick out of--pulling the legs of outsiders--and it's a well-developed, socially-prized art form.)

I have come to think, though, that some of the errors are just too glaring to be honest mistakes: For instance, the total absence of any reference to race, which is surely central to any story of the South, especially its religion. Or the film's completely omitting the fact that the religion portrayed in the movie is not only generally shunned, but held in contempt, by Southern evangelicals, who are the vast majority of religious people in the South.

Then there's that strange-looking old crippled guy who tells so many stories--like the confabulation about the Sears catalog. On the assumtion that this is a documentary, you might think he's some backwoods poet, some exemplar of hillbilly wisdom, some local wonder that they've found on their search. But he's Harry Crews, the novelist and critic, college professor, playwright, etc. In the context of the movie, the presence of this (imported to the scene, most likely paid) professional writer, without his being identified as who he is, is at least a bit misleading.

I found his stories mostly fanciful, at best. For instance, I never ever knew anyone who did with the Sears catalog what Crews said "we" do. And I certainly never saw a greater proportion of the populace lacking body parts, or suffering "open sores," in the South than in other places I've lived. The arrival of the Sears catalog was certainly a major cultural event, and we *did* all talk about it for days after it arrived--but it didn't signify what Crews said it did, and our conversations didn't take the form Crews claims, in my experience. And the story about keeping birds in the house, or birds spitting, bears no relation to anything like anything I ever heard, saw, or experienced in the South. Harry Crews is a very inventive fiction writer--and he's at it here, I think.

Sometimes Jim White seems very real, with genuine compassion for the people of whom he speaks, but much of his cosmological grandiloquence seems contrived, to me. Occasionally, he seems caught in his own pose. For instance, he declines to go into a bar, telling the film makers, "I got no use for a place like that," and his disgust seems like one of his more spontaneous, authentic reactions, quite genuine. But then in his narrative voice-over, obviously (from the difference in production values) recorded separately, he waxes lyrical about the "great beauty" of such "real" places. His contempt felt more authentic than his affectation of deep insight.

At least one of White's best aphorisms is, shall we say charitably, borrowed--"Between grief and nothing, I'll take grief." (Faulkner, the last page of The Wild Palms.) Leaves you wondering about some of the other good lines--whether they're borrowed, too. My favorite line in the movie, "I was looking for the gold tooth in God's crooked smile"--I certainly hope White didn't borrow that one, uncredited. But I just don't trust that it's original.

The posed musical numbers seem more like a Gothic caricature of someone's overwrought, and ill-researched, idea of the South, since few of them seem to be actual performances by local musicians. This is not documentary--this is affectation posing as discovery.

Now, on the plus side, parts of the film are an invaluable glimpse into the spiritual lives of what Southerners call "white trash." Though I'm the son of a rural Mississippi Baptist minister, I never had a chance to see any of this up-close in real life. This movie is, for a Southern Baptist boy, a nice chance to get to know something about a slim, unhappy slice of the South that ordinary Southern life would never allow him to see.

When the movie goes into local settings, and observes the lives and activities of the people, there's much that's worthwhile. Some of it is touching, some scary, some just bewildering. None of it has much to do with the Meaning of The South, or other overblown non-sense like that. But it has much to do with the hardscrabble efforts of some folks to get through life, well or badly, that most of us (thank God) will never see up-close and personal. To see it is very instructive, and very valuable if you can see it for itself, not as the filmmakers want you to.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Salvation on White Mountain, January 7, 2007

By 

S. Harris (Spotsylvania, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (DVD)

This is a strange move to watch. It's not a documentary, even though it resembles one. Probably the best way to think of "Searching for the Wrong-eyed Jesus" is that what you are watching is one man's visual poem of a (large) region and people. And White's version, which is that of a musician's, is highly selective, jumping from the deep South into Appalachia, with hardly a blink - though these two regions, though similar, also have many differences. White can be annoying in his own way, since many of his musings regarding the South, can sound both pithy and full-of-it at the same time. If you are from the South, it seems pretty darned manipulative, even more so when you realize this film was done for BBC. White, clearly, is pushing buttons for a foreign audience, but he does it with such a clear-eyed sincerity that he's easy to forgive. It's kind of like listening to the Rolling Stones singing "Hand of Fate." You enjoy the song -- it rocks -- but you also know it's a bit hokey. Whatever his sins, White loves the South and its people, so roll with it.

But where does that leave the viewer? Well, it's not the real South with all of its complexities, but to be fair, that would take a series. Still, the parts that White offers up are real enough, and important to him, so I suggest you allow him his idiosyncracies, because he does entertain with some pretty fine music by some excellent folks you may not have even heard of. Cat Power, 16 Horsepower, The Handsome Family, to name a few, along with good story telling by the original literary wild man, Harry Crews. Accompanying many of the songs, are haunting film images that will hang with you. For example, the Handsome Family, singing from the porch of nearly flooded shotgun shack, or David Eugene Edwards (who strikes me as some sort of musical genius), from 16 Horsepower, singing Wayfaring Stranger out in the woods, his hands dancing lightly over his banjo, while his voice sends chills down your spine. Whew. These are real diamonds, and they're not rough.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars roadside diner mysticism, March 18, 2006

By 

Glen Sooter (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (DVD)

At some point early in the film White suggests something to the effect of "This is my kind of road" as he drives through junk yards, abandoned buildings, crumbling parking lots...

There may well have been a Wal-Mart a block away, but there's no place for such global-consumption-at-your-fingertips Generica in this flim. These nearly forgotten roads seem to be chosen more as a way to reinforce the boundaries from which White has chosen to view the world (and have the world view his music?) than for any realistic view of the South. It's scary to think this is what British people might now think of the South (if they didn't already).

I say this only because I live in a similarly sparsely-populated region way north of the Mason-Dixon - also dominated by poor, white, former democrat-now republican voting religious people with unique accents. Their ancestors found their way here when timber, mining, and shipping boomed. Not much has changed here in 70 years either.

I could drive through these ghost towns and back roads finding quirky people of various zealotries to put in a film too. I've certainly met plenty. But it wouldn't necessarily be an encompassing view of the region's people by any means. Most here and, I assume in the South as well, are far too normal and complicated for a film like this.

But - that said - maybe this film doesn't need to seek balance. They state early on that the goal of the film is to find the culture at the root of White's alt-country music - which is rural, white, poor, American. You can't really sing about bludgeoning a person to death standing in front of a display of X-Box consoles, now can you? Maybe the film finds that culture in all its glory and tragedy.

If you like Americana music stylings at all, the music is great and creatively interspersed. The film looks great. White's scholastic-minded metaphors are certainly interesting - I liked the ice cream one. I wonder if he talks like that all the time (which would be very impressive) or whether he was trying to assure the viewer that, while the film may be dominated by poor, culturally-isolated "you're either with us or you're against us", fire-and-brimstone religious zealots, the captain of our 1970 Chevy ship has been around the world and sees the bigger picture.

For instance, the film presents a preacher who kicked a decade of drug addiction and, obvious to anyone outside any religious extremism, just replaced it with another addiction in Christian fundamentalism. The film allows such individuals their spiritual journeys, neither endorsing them nor condemning. In so doing, it also allows some to reveal a deeper mysticism, a deeper understanding of the unity of all life one might more generally equate with Indigenous spirituality or New Agism than Christian religion. It is a side of the Bible Belt rarely revealed when its leaders are on the attack or on the defense in the media.

Nevertheless, every stereotype I've ever had of the rural South was reinforced 10-fold. Good? Bad? Neither? - it's certainly an interesting ride through the lives that write song lyrics - reminding you that the ever suburbanizing corporate economy hasn't made us all generic and predictable... yet.