Movie Maven

Written and Directed by: Craig Brewer
Starring: Christina Ricci, Samuel L. Jackson, Justin Timberlake

If I had to describe "Black Snake Moan" in one word, the only one that seems remotely fitting is "writhing." The Southern Gothic fable about a wild girl and the God-fearing bluesman who tries to cure her of her wicked ways is a tale that, for the first half at least, moves forward like the titular snake, slithering and undulating in ways you didn't know could appear in nature.

When we first see Rae (Ricci), she's making love to her boyfriend (Timberlake) for the last time before he joins the army. It's a lovely intimate moment, but the second he drives away, she falls to the ground, clawing and moaning like an alley cat in heat. The cicadas in the background swell in time with her wailing, and oh, she just can't help herself, she needs it, she's gotta have it now. She goes on to a party where she takes all manner of hillbilly meds, fucks a guy on a football field and ends up beaten on the side of the road in just her confederate t-shirt and dirty white panties within the first 20 minutes of the film.

Watching Rae self-destruct is both terrifying and fabulously fun to watch. Ricci and Craig Brewer, who wrote and directed the film, understand the special paradox of melodrama: it's so serious it becomes absurd, and its absurdity becomes an somewhat accurate portrayal of truth. Rae embodies sin and inequity, but in actuality she's a victim, and the message is beautifully buried underneath all the dirt and sweat. What follows is a deliciously surreal turn when Jackson's Lazarus finds Rae, takes her home and chains her to a radiator in order to "heal" her. The most remarkable thing about this turn of events is that Brewer miraculously manages to avoid the obvious icky racial issues surrounding the image of a large black man keeping a white girl chained up in his house. The only shame is that about halfway through the film, the reason for Rae's affliction is neatly "explained." After this, the film begins to take itself too seriously, which is a little disappointing.

But, oh, this cast. Samuel L. Jackson is fabulous as Lazarus. Jackson does his own singing and guitar-picking, and his voice is a striking mix of longing, hate and sheer sexual virility. I have a theory that if you simply put Samuel L. Jackson into the frame, the mise en scene immediately becomes 45 percent more bad-ass, and this film goes a long way to prove it.

I think Justin Timberlake is a little overrated as an actor (people seem to fall over themselves when they realize he can actually deliver a line) but there is a delicacy to his performance here as Rae's cuckolded boyfriend Ronnie which I wasn't expecting. He surrounds his character with the thinnest veneer of machismo, which, when stripped away, reveals a hot ball of pain and insecurity. It could have been a throwaway character, but Timberlake manages to hold his own nicely with Ricci and Jackson.

The last good part of "Black Snake Moan," is set in a honky-tonk, with Jackson singing a raging version of Stack-o-Lee and Ricci whirling in a trance-like (and entirely sober) state. Yes, Jackson's singing her pain, he's singing the wickedness out of her, and in that moment you can practically wipe the Louisiana humidity off your foreheads and smell the warm spilled beer cooking on the bar. Jackson's role may be to lead Rae back to God, but Brewer never lets us forget that this is a movie about humanity.

Photo courtesy of Collider.