Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 4:4	Budget Medium

Okay, so I checked and it is just coincidence that Samuel L. Jackson starred in two "snake" movies in 2006. I have already reviewed Snakes on a Plane, and now on to Black Snake Moan. As usual, if you have not seen the movie, I would recommend waiting until you have done so to read the review.

Perhaps we should start with the music. As I was watching the movie I kept thinking that Ry Cooder must have done the score and played a fair bit of the music. It was clearly his style of music, it was just a bit raw and not as heavily produced as his usual stuff, but I would have bet money (albeit a small amount) that it was Cooder. Turns out I was wrong though not too far off the mark. Jim Dickensen (long time Ry Cooder collaborator) and his sons play a lot of the music. Ry Cooder is a better musician than Dickensen in terms of drive, composing and arranging, but there was a reason that Cooder used Dickensen, the man plays with heart and does a great job on this movie. Cooder has a tendency to polish songs and create fairly elaborate arrangements which would have been at odds with the type of bluesman that Jackson was portraying, not a session player but a performer. There is an edge to the music that is authentic. I have been listening to some music ripped from 78s lately including artists like Jesse Thomas and Leadbelly and the music in Black Snake Moan would do them proud. Had the movie itself been filmed by a large studio, the compromises and changes would have ruined it, the same way that overproducing the music would have diluted the power of the songs. Toning down the intensity or pushing for a more resolved, happier ending would have destroyed the fine line the movie walks.

The movie starts with Rae (Christina Ricci "Cursed") and Ronnie (Justin Timberlake) having sex while some Memphis blues are playing. So far, so good. Ronnie is in the National Guard and is shipping out. He has an anxiety attack but leaves anyway. Rae appears to have some sort of attack herself and is soon having sex with Tehronne, a Black guy who sells drugs. After leaving Tehronne's place, Rae walks by a store where she has a cryptic conversation with a woman. There is a fair amount of tension in this conversation, but their relationship is not clearly defined. At a party later that night, Rae takes a handful of drugs and ends up having sex with yet another guy. Ronnie's friend offers to give her a ride home and ends up beating her up and dumping her by the roadside. She wakes up a couple of days later in Lazarus' house chained to a radiator. Through a series of flashbacks and nightmares, we learn that she has had a traumatic experience that we recognize pretty quickly as sexual abuse. After some initial fighting, she puts her faith in Lazarus and finds security and safety when in his care. This lets her confront her past and essentially cure herself. In the meantime Ronnie has washed out of the guard due to the anxiety attacks but Rae stays with him anyway. As the movie ends, we see that Rae is working on making Ronnie healed as well.

I watched Sorority Boys last week and the lead actress used a body double for the shower scene. Body doubles severely limit what the cinematographer can do with a scene and can really interrupt the flow of a movie. Okay, so it is not like Sorority Boys was so engrossing that noticing the body double disrupted the movie much, but the point is still valid. If the lead part calls for nudity, the actress who takes the part should be prepared to get naked. On the other hand, if the movie calls for the actress to get naked just for the publicity factor, I can see the actress opting out. Christina has a few nude scenes and spends a great deal of the movie in a cut off shirt and underpants. Christina took a bit of chance here, but I think it paid off. Rae is clearly a troubled girl and Ricci plays her with a wide range of emotions, strengths and weaknesses. As the movie starts, Rae is at a crossroads. When she is with Ronnie, she is in better control but without him she falls back on her old ways. Oddly enough, Ronnie's calming influence is that Rae has to take care of him. By establishing that she is already heading in the right direction, the big changes that she makes during the course of the movie make a little more sense. She was not normal yet and might have failed completely, but the fact that she had made some steps in the right direction keeps the changes from being too extreme.

As the movie starts for Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) his wife, Rose, is leaving him for a younger man. She pointedly tells him that she does not love him anymore and wants to have a life. Lazarus stops for a drink and the bartender laments that he does not play music there anymore. The man that Rose is leaving him for stops in and it is revealed that he is Lazarus' brother. After making the obvious biblical reference Lazarus lets him go. Later that evening, Lazarus (good and drunk by now) takes a tractor to the bed of roses that he planted for Rose demolitioning both the roses and the white picket fence surrounging them. The next morning he finds Rae lying in the dirt road in front of his house. He takes her in and notices she has a fever. He runs into town and gets some medicine for his sick "niece". To combat Rae's nightmares he chains her to a radiator and disconnects his phone. Over the next couple of days Rae recovers and Lazarus looks at his own problems while forcing Rae to look at hers. He plays a couple of songs. The local minister comes out to the house to talk to Lazarus and after a small confrontation, Lazarus has him talk to Rae. After an odd dinner with the minister, a local boy, Lazarus and Rae still chained to the radiator, Lazarus decides to unchain Rae. While Lazarus is flirting with the woman from the pharmacy, Rae confronts her mother about allowing her boyfriend to molest her; this does not go well. After growing restless at home, he and Rae go to the bar where he reunites with his old band and rocks the joint. Rae dances provocatively and drinks. After a confrontation with Ronnie, Lazarus goes to visit the pharmacy lady and they attend a bonding ceremony for Rae and Ronnie. It is hinted that they will start dating.

Through good writing and great acting we learn a lot about Lazarus without a lot of dialog. Lazarus was a bit of a hell raiser who played the blues in the local area. Upon marrying a younger woman, he tried to settle down and give up that lifestyle. Perhaps succeeding too well, he also expected Rose to live the same way and when she could no longer see the man she married, she left him. In talking to Rae, he is forced to consider his past. When talking to Miss Angie, the pharmacy woman, she hints that she has had trouble in her past and only has her days left to her now. For a minute you might think this is a chick flick where all the guys are idiots, but the writer treats everyone of his characters with respect so that all of them have something to offer.

Black Snake Moan and Snakes on a Plane have two things in common; one is that Jackson says motherfucker several times in both of them. The other is that they both could have been awful. Black Snake Moan dances right up to exploitation line but doesn't cross over. Ricci spends most of the first hour nearly naked and when Lazarus finally does get some dresses for her, she ends up in this tight little sundress. Frequently the movie lacks any subtlety. I mean really, Lazarus? The guy who returns from the dead? The ex-wife named Rose for whom he planted a rose garden and enclosed it in a white picket fence? Rae's wounds that visually reflect her mental healing? How about Rae's attacks that physically make her double over and then seek sex for relief? During one of the extras on the disc, the director talks about how he was creating an allegory and a musical. This helps explain the broad strokes that he paints some of his characters with and Rae in particular. Besides the physical manifestations of her fears and her healing, there is the sex. During the first part of the film she has sex as a way to ward off her fears. When we reach the scene where Lazarus is playing music again, Rae is dancing sensuously and drinking but is in control. There is close to a half hour of music in the film which puts a limit to the dialog and pushes the movie towards more obvious techniques.

Overall, I really liked the movie and in particular I liked: First the music. While I am not a huge blues fan, I am particularly fond of this style of blues. Second Christina Ricci for getting naked and doing a great job acting. Third Samuel L. Jackon for doing a great job acting but not getting naked. Also the movie was nicely paced and moved along steadily and the musical interludes were not distracting (part of this was that I loved the music and the way it was played). There is an extendened musical number in the bar that has two songs in a row. The director had an absolutely brilliant moment here. Visually the scene is breathtaking, full of life and color. He is even able to move the story along as we have cause to worry about Rae as she dances with abandon during the music. We wonder if she is going to return to her bad habits.

On a final note, several of the descriptions of the Lazarus character cite him as being religious. In fact, adhering to what a good Christian should be seemed to be a major contributor to his problems. In his efforts to conform to what he thought was expected of him, he lost his wife and his way. By the end of the movie when he asks the minister to talk to Rae, the minister doesn't say pray to God for forgiveness. Instead he refers to a vague divinity that you should aspire to during difficult times, mostly suggesting that Rae herself has the strength she needs without outside intervention. I don't think this is meant to be a slam at religion, but just a symptom of the broad strokes the directors used; church and society are lumped together. I think this is apparent when the minister knows that Lazarus has a women chained up in his house, but after spending time with both of them merely expresses his concern over the situation and implies that Lazarus will do the right thing.

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