"Black Snake Moan"

Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci star in this wild, sweet little picture about sex, redemption and music.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Read more: Stephanie Zacharek, Movies, Samuel L. Jackson, Movie Reviews, Arts & Entertainment, Christina Ricci, Reviews, Justin Timberlake, Craig Brewer

Christina Ricci and Samuel L. Jackson

March 2, 2007 | In his passionate and rapturously entertaining 1995 book "It Came From Memphis," Robert Gordon explains how, in the summer of 1966, the Ku Klux Klan held a rally at the city's Overton Park Band Shell, attracting an audience of about 400. Just a week later, more than twice as many people showed up for the first Memphis Country Blues Festival, an event organized by a bunch of, in Gordon's words, "beatnik blues fans," and one in which black and white performers shared the stage. Among the former were blues artists like Bukka White and Furry Lewis, two gentlemen who, in 1966, were already approaching senior citizen status. "The corporeal spirituality of the blues musicians was as gripping as their music," Gordon writes of the event. "What they played was unencumbered by progress, as relevant in 1966 as in 1926. They cut through the urban soundtrack, transporting listeners back in time with them. At their feet, confronted by them, one could not help but be moved. They physically embodied the music: leathery and worn, dusty, dry. The repetition in what they played, the hypnotism, was the sonic equivalent of a plowed field, row upon row."

Writing about a specific event and specific performers, Gordon captures some of the elusive, mystical qualities of the blues in general, particularly with that seemingly contradictory phrase "corporeal spirituality." Can the blues save us, or is it the tool of the devil? Are our bodies, with all their built-in wants and needs, a gift or a burden? The only way to answer those questions is with more questions, and more music, which is the approach Memphis-based filmmaker Craig Brewer takes in "Black Snake Moan," a wild and sweet little picture about sex, redemption and music, though perhaps not necessarily in that order.

In "Black Snake Moan" -- which Brewer also wrote -- Samuel L. Jackson plays Lazarus, a juke-joint bluesman who's given up music for farming. He's bitter, disillusioned and more than a little screwed up: His wife has just left him for his brother, and although he's a God-fearing man, tight with his local preacher (played by John Cothran), he talks some crazy talk about taking vengeance on the ex. He's distracted, though, when he discovers a young woman, who's been beaten into unconsciousness, lying by the side of the road near his property. He carries her to his home, a haven of weathered floorboards and sagging sofas, and administers medicine he's charmed out of the local pharmacist, Angela (S. Epatha Merkerson).

Lazarus learns that the young woman's name is Rae -- she's played by Christina Ricci -- and that her problems run so deep they can't be cured with drugstore medicine. Rae is the town's bad girl, a young woman who was neglected by her mother and abused by men all her life, and who sleeps around compulsively as a way of staving off fear and loneliness. She has a steady boyfriend, Ronnie (Justin Timberlake), who has helped keep her grounded. But he's just headed off to boot camp, and Rae is so distraught, she lapses into her old habits. She doesn't even have to go out looking for trouble; it finds her. A pal of Ronnie's, who's supposed to be looking after her, rapes her and beats her, leaving her for dead, which is where Lazarus steps in. But as Rae recuperates on his couch -- dressed in the clothes she was wearing when he found her, a pair of cut-off shorts and an abbreviated T-shirt adorned with crossed Confederate and American flags -- Lazarus comes to realize that she has the "sickness." She's writhing, burning with fever: In her delirium, she dashes out of the cabin, ready to do herself harm. So he chains her to his radiator to rid her of the demons that control her.

That's the gimmick of "Black Snake Moan," a gimmick that leads us, like a trail of manna bread crumbs, to the movie's soul. Brewer is a provocateur, a troublemaker, and the first act of "Black Snake Moan" is clearly designed to throw us off our game, to make us wonder where in tarnation this aggressively outlandish picture is going. The poster for "Black Snake Moan," designed to look like a comic-book cover, shows the muscular Lazarus looming, in a stance that could be either protective or threatening, over the saucy Rae in her rebel dishabille: He grips the sturdy iron chain that encircles her waist. The image meets at the crossroads of biblical symbolism and exploitation cinema, with a little Frank Frazetta thrown in.

I wouldn't call the "Black Snake Moan" campaign false advertising. But I would call it a mischievous bait-and-switch. "Black Snake Moan" is ultimately about damaged people helping one another to become their best selves, but come on: What person with a grain of sense would see a movie with that on its poster? The picture is very obviously crafted as a fable. Its characters are stereotypes at the beginning, but our focus sharpens as we watch them: They sneak out of the roles we've assigned to them and become people instead.

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