'Black Snake Moan' gets hot down South
Cast: Christina Ricci, Samuel L. Jackson, Justin Timberlake, John Cothran Jr., S. Epatha Merkerson
A quick synopsis of Black Snake Moan could make it sound like the most serious and depressing of movies: An abused girl with addiction problems and a tendency to seek self-validation in promiscuous sex gets beaten senseless and thrown out of a car, and is then taken hostage by a man who chains her to a radiator. Is this the work of some morbidly depressive European director?
Actually, it's the work of director Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow), stars Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci, and is American down to the last detail. More surprising still, it's actually a funny and even strangely innocent tale.
The clues are in the tag line--"Everything is hotter down South"--and poster, which shows a semi-naked Ricci held on a chain by a glowering Jackson. The allusions to race, sex, slavery and the South are so outrageous that you just know this movie can't be serious.
In fact, Black Snake Moan is inspired by the "blaxploitation" movies of the 1970s, which targeted black audiences with a lurid mix of sex, violence and--critics say--crude racial stereotypes. Shaft (1971) is often described as the first in the genre, and certainly set the template in terms of suggestive titles and tag lines. ("The mob wanted Harlem back. They got Shaft...up to here.")
The new movie is faithful to all these ingredients, but is part homage, part parody. The end result is over-the-top entertainment for audiences of all colors.
Assaulted and left for dead by the side of the road, Rae (Ricci) is found the next morning by Lazarus (Jackson), who takes her to his shack of a home and patches her up. But Rae proves to be less than grateful to her savior. Determined to continue her dissolute lifestyle, she stumbles away clad in nothing but cut-off T-shirt and panties. Lazarus drags her back, partly because he's afraid the cops will assume he was the one who attacked her, but more because he feels a heaven-sent duty to rescue a girl known as the neighborhood nympho.
When Rae still won't accept his help, Lazarus decides more drastic action is needed, securing her to the radiator with a heavy chain and telling her she will stay that way until she's "better."
As plot set-ups go, they don't come much more eye-popping. A black guy with a white nymphette chained up in his house? The suggestion that female sexuality is something that needs to be tamed? There's something here to offend everyone who takes the movie too earnestly.
But the Southern gothic is really a deadpan send-up of the genre, and hides a very conventional morality play.
Lazarus' methods may be unorthodox, but his intentions really are as pure as he says. In fact, he's probably the only man in town who wouldn't take advantage of her.
And Rae may be messed up, but we gradually learn that she had some male help getting that way.
What's more, the moral of the story turns out to be that marriage and commitment are the cures for most ills. Lazarus is actually suffering as much as Rae, having recently been dumped by his self-seeking wife. His captive, meanwhile, is off the rails partly because the one man she loves--Ronnie (Justin Timberlake)--has left town to join the army.
Black Snake Moan isn't to be taken too seriously, with most of the fun lying in how it milks the provocative mise-en-scene for bizarrely beautiful visuals. You haven't lived till you've seen a snarling, near-naked Ricci dragging Jackson through the fields on the end of her chain.
There's also a great blues soundtrack, and spot-on acting throughout. Ricci is a volatile mixture of energy, fear, loathing and desire, while Jackson proves he can combine quiet dignity with his more familiar righteous anger.
Most surprising, however, is Timberlake's gentle and genuinely affecting turn as the panic-attack prone Ronnie. Should the singer think about giving up his day job? Many music fans may say "yes." Movie fans may be surprised to find that they agree.
The movie opens on Sept. 1 (Aug. 18, 2007)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/arts/20070818TDY19002.htm
. Thanks for that, nice review.
