Customer Reviews

Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This is a very beautiful film. Although very staged at times, it still seems slice of life. Me being a 47 year old black man from a city in eastern North Carolina, i didn't see myself here, but i saw what goes on DEEPER off-roads than the comparitively regular off-roads i usually encounter.

i repeat. How did David Johansen get in this movie ?

I've watched this DVD three times now and it keeps getting better. The soundtrack is wonderful and the film explores the wacky creepiness of the deep south subject matter without insulting or degrading the people or places depicted.

I was unfamiliar with the film maker and most of the musicians involved before seeing this movie, but now I am a huge fan of all of them.

This is a VERY seductive documentary. Sneaky almost. You could start out a Yankee intellectual, nodding away, checking out the always cool backwoods backwards Southern hick "culture", sarcastically noting to yourself "A documentary of the South made by an English director - hah - what's the denominator...bad teeth?

Then somewhere in between the Louisiana swampland and the West Virginia coal mines, you get so captivated by the gorgeous local color, and lowball sincerity and hiball poetry of the narrator host, that a Stockholm syndrome kicks in, and, I swear to God, you start feeling a little wood for the Pentacostals.

A real Rosetta stone for unlocking the documentary is a scene in a Motel 6 room somewhere in Appalachia. Two guys are kicking back, doing an old folk blues number. The singer looks vaguely familiar in a Waylon Jennings kinda way - cowboy hat, outlaw sideburns and beard, casual clothes - and I remember thinking, "looks almost like David Johansen".

Later, the credits roll, you check out the additional footage, and guess what? It WAS David Johansen. Now think about this for a moment. Here's an actor and performer of consummate taste. He was once front man for the glam rock/proto punk New York Dolls. Then he had a popular run as Buster Poindexter, lounge singer tux-traodinaire, and here he is, totally submerged in and imbued with the persona of a Southern folk blues artist. A bit of a latter day Leon Redbone.

You can call this "Southern Gothic", and I do, and it has this core irony that Johansen illustrates by his very presence. On the one hand, the culture has an authenticity and a history, that go way back and way deep, and many of the people in this film are so a part of it they have no other perspective. BUT, some do, and there is also an existential element, exemplified by "choosing Jay-suss". You can adopt the culture, if it's done with a pure heart, and not be self-conscious or hypocritical. This point is made very clearly at the beginning of the movie by the narrator who explains that he grew up in the South, left it, and came back, deciding to be "the very best Southerner he could be at that point".

So the documentary has a whole nuther layer to think about. The conflict and unity possible between the heart and the mind. John Huston's adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood is the only other film I can think of that takes you so deep into this other world right before our eyes, or at least, within five miles of the Interstate. Beautiful film. Beautiful music. A beautiful docu-poem. And done with a pure heart.

This is a film about a region, its people and a kind of music. There is a haunting uneasiness in this music: in the high whine of steel and string, in the subject of the lyrics, and the facial expressions. That haunting wraps and holds you from inside; it is comforting.

Jim White's music, and the music of the other artists is about strife, and untimely death. The cinematography pulls you along on this trip. I found myself anticipating each scene from the hound running through the swamp, to author Harry Crews ambling down a dirt road telling us about how stories were made up in the south, about "perfect" Sears and Roebuck catalog models with no missing fingers, who still had both of their eyes.

Knowing Jim's music (which inspired the documentary) made it all more rich and understandable. Some have looked in, without knowing the poverty, the regional isolation, or Jim's Wrong-Eyed Jesus music, and have written reviews saying that this is an exploitation of unfortunate people. But they missed the beauty of the struggle, and the triumph in the people's stories.

This movie is really a story about the influences in Jim White's life. As he personally discloses he is not a "native" to the South but that the South is in his blood and has made him who he is. As such this is a journey into that stream.

By the title it would seem that we are to meet some odd, eccentric, off the wall slice of Americana. Perhaps it is due to my background but I did not see the individuals in the film as odd at all. Different maybe but not odd or otherwise eccentric in a way that is shocking. They are just real people.

The film is overall a "religious" film in the sense that in these travels with these characters it is religion that defines who they are. It is ultimately a faith journey. And in this the film is quite beautiful. For anyone who has traveled in rural counties, whether in the South or in Appalachia country, religion is the defining feature. To understand this culture one must understand the faith. Jim White makes a decent host but sometimes he tries too hard to be deep or profound. He, like the viewer, still remains outside looking in.

Many of the shots, quite lovely at that, are choreographed and staged. Journey through prison, Pentecostal churches, a coal mine and other characteristic haunts such as a restaurant whose banner proclaims Jesus saves. Wonderfully quirky yet genuinely beautiful people.

But the highlight of the film is the music. Musicians play songs in eerily beautiful settings in an attempt to have the landscape appear as odd as the characters being portrayed. I suppose alt-country is a fitting label but the music is wonderful. Religious themes are tackled from an outsider's point of view, discussing the challenges of belief and doubt and the difficulties of life with lovely, haunting musicianship.

Overall it did not live up to the hype of its intent but it is still a wonderful film.

The premise of the movie is simple. The director listened to a record by a recording artist and wanted to find out more about that artist's world and influences. So he sets off and has the singer/songwriter guide him around.

Some of the criticisms of the movie are silly. The film does not claim to be a representation of the totality of the South. It doesn't set out to explore the way every segment of Southern society lives. I get the sense that those criticizing the movie for not showing the other side are embarrassed and ashamed that there are poor uneducated trailer trash in their states and don't want to be lumped in with them. To me that is disrespectful to the people whose lives are being shown in this movie. It is as if their stories and lives do not deserved to be filmed and explored. And if they are, they should be totally marginalized by having disclaimers that read 'these are not real southerns and do not represent the south, we're better than these people' In short, those critics want these people to be ignored so as not to negatively affect the south's image.

Well these people are people and they have lives and stories that are interesting and deserve to be seen and heard. Jim White serves as a good guide, and the film makers allow the subjects to express themselves in their own way. The stories you hear and the images you see are ones you might never see or hear if it weren't for the film. Our society worships beauty and success, so those on the fringes are rarely seen or heard or given respect.

The movie has no plot or story arc, it is a compilation of vignettes and images that give an insight into a few poor small town southerns' lives. It's kind of nice to see a movie that doesn't try to be political or get some message across; but just to present people and their environment. The cinematography is great, there are some really haunting images. The one that stuck in my mind was the female radio preacher who looked to be in her 80's. Her face was so unique, I can't really describe how she looked but it was arresting.

So, if you like off-beat stories and movies, I'm sure you'll like this movie.

This documentary captures an energy that can`t be denied and shows us people grappling with a world view that doesn`t seem to allow anyone to sit on the fence.Yet Jim White seems to have found a middle path, through his art and his own lifelong struggles. A surreal and riveting existential quest.