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Black Snake Moan
What could have been just another trashy exploitation film (religious fanatic imprisons beautiful young promiscuous substance abuser) is instead a fascinating look at friendship and redemption, largely due to great performances and volatile chemistry between starts Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci.
Lazarus (Jackson) used to be a bluesman, but now spends his time puttering around his land in dirt poor rural Tennessee. His wife had an affair with his best friend and leaves him for his young brother; Jackson finds what solace he can in excessive religiosity.
Meanwhile, Rae (played fabulously by a nearly unrecognizable Ricci, who appears to be channeling a young Susan Sarandon) acts out the pain of her early childhood sexual abuse by getting chemically altered and giving men, lots of men, what she thinks they want before they take it from her. Her boyfriend, Ronnie, played by a passable Justin Timberlake, joins the service, thinking he’ll make a normal life for himself and Rae as a couple. He isn’t gone a full day before Rae has several misadventures, some of a sexual nature, and winds up beaten and bloody outside Lazarus’ (yes, the guy who was raised from the dead, a little symbolic overkill here) door.
Lazarus decides it’s his mission to save Rae, both her bloody body and her wicked soul. He’s dead serious – enough to confine her to his house and yard with a chain. Rae doesn’t want to be saved and is, understandably enough, mad as hell. She can’t argue, cajole or sleep her way into changing Lazarus’s mind, however.
What follows could have been a soft porn nightmare; instead, Lazarus and Rae become friends. He sees the pain, and the good, in her. She helps him get over his heartache. Like “Lost in Translation,” “Black Snake Moan” is a breath of fresh air in showing that an older man and a young, beautiful woman can have a platonic, deeply felt friendship.
Which is not what Ronnie thinks at first when, given the ax for anxiety attacks, he returns to collect Rae. But transformation happens here. As it does to Lazarus, who risks his heart by mildly courting the quiet, churchgoing Angela (S. Epatha Merkerson of “Lackawanna Blues and “Law and Order”) and by singing the blues again in public (the music is terrific but the pious Lazarus’ crass language and smutty stories inject the only false note here.)
“Black Snake Moan” is not a great movie, but it’s a good one.
Reviewed By: Honorah Crowley
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