Product Description

Take a captivating and compelling road trip through the creative spirit of the American South, a world of churches, prisons, coalmines, truckstops, juke joints, swamps and mountains. Along the way you'll meet musicians including the Handsome Family, Johnny Dowd, 16 Horsepower, and David Johansen, old time banjo player Lee Sexton, and novelist Harry Crews. This film is a collage of stories and testimonies filled with sudden death, sin and redemption... and all the while, a strange Southern Jesus looms in the background.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14779 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2006-03-14
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 82 minutes

Customer Reviews

On wrong-eyed views of the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
One of the things about the current intellectual climate of this country that I hate the most is this muddle-headed idea that every view expressed in a writer's work must in every instance be seen as representative of, and in total agreement with, what some critic or another perceives to be the prevailing view of some larger population on whose behalf the critic presumes to speak - be it a culture, a race, a religion, an entire nation, or in this case merely a small portion of one. And if in the critic's view the work fails to measure up to what the critic already has it in his mind the work ought to be or ought to say, then the creator of the work is chided for "being biased", "not objective", "not telling it the way it really is", "having an agenda", or what is far worse, of not being "fair and balanced" (Pardon me while I harf).

Look up Roger Ebert's critique of the Coen Brothers film, "Raising Arizona", and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about. Ebert, who surely knows better than this, actually criticized the film because in "real life" people don't talk the way the characters do in the movie. Imagine, characters in a Coen Brothers movie not behaving normally. You might as well accuse Bugs Bunny of not behaving like a real rabbit.

The truth is a writer's responsibility is only to his story. To tell it his way. In his own words. The story may correspond to the "real world", or to what some larger population of people perceives the real world to be but it need not and, in fact, shouldn't. Thus it's not so much that critics of this film miss the point when they say that it doesn't fairly represent all Southerners, it's that the criticism is more true than they realize. The film really does represent a narrow point of view, that of its primary narrator. But that's exactly what it is supposed to do and nothing more. It does this with such extraordinary beauty, that you can forgive its occasional lack of clarity. Well, to be completely honest, the narrative unravels nearly to the point of incoherence. But that is, as I said, forgivable given that the film is a such a beautiful and captivating thing to see. Some have criticized the film for lacking philosophical sophistication. Now who, I ask you, would have expected that of a film by and about poor Southern white trash? The fact is this film never intends to dissect Southern life, merely to ponder it, to brood over it, and at times to even sulk about it.

The point I'm trying to make is that this film is indeed as one reviewer has described it - a visual poem. Sadly, in our culture poetic musing has become such a dying art (God help us) that would-be critics afflicted with some sort of aesthetic myopia too often mistake it for flawed analysis. Don't let that happen to you. When you view this film, and you really should, it is worth bearing in mind that what you are watching is not so much a visual recording as a vision itself - one that was created specifically for your entertainment, if not necessarily for your assent. So whether you should or should not agree with what the film has to say about Southern life, I don't pretend to know. But I can just about guarantee that in your whole life you have never experienced a film quite like this one. That alone is enough to recommend it highly.

Worthwhile, but lacking integrity
My family has lived in the South since it was jungle, since before Mississippi was even a territory, much less a state. But I moved away from Mississippi thirty years ago, and from the South altogether over twenty years ago, and I have nothing good to say about the South. My criticisms of this movie, then, aren't due to wounded Southern chauvinism.

After I'd rented this movie, I knew I'd want to watch it repeatedly, so I bought it. I don't regret that decision, but the more I watch it, the more suspect the film, and its makers' intentions, become.

From the first, I knew that the film is profoundly inaccurate: to call this a mirror of the South, or a deep exploration of Southern culture, is about like saying the truth about New York City is found in the voodoo subculture of certain parts of Harlem.

But I thought that was probably a mistake of perspective, a matter of the filmmakers not knowing any better--and maybe getting taken for a ride by the Southerners. (That's something Southerners get a kick out of--pulling the legs of outsiders--and it's a well-developed, socially-prized art form.)

I have come to think, though, that some of the errors are just too glaring to be honest mistakes: For instance, the total absence of any reference to race, which is surely central to any story of the South, especially its religion. Or the film's completely omitting the fact that the religion portrayed in the movie is not only generally shunned, but held in contempt, by Southern evangelicals, who are the vast majority of religious people in the South.

Then there's that strange-looking old crippled guy who tells so many stories--like the confabulation about the Sears catalog. On the assumtion that this is a documentary, you might think he's some backwoods poet, some exemplar of hillbilly wisdom, some local wonder that they've found on their search. But he's Harry Crews, the novelist and critic, college professor, playwright, etc. In the context of the movie, the presence of this (imported to the scene, most likely paid) professional writer, without his being identified as who he is, is at least a bit misleading.

I found his stories mostly fanciful, at best. For instance, I never ever knew anyone who did with the Sears catalog what Crews said "we" do. And I certainly never saw a greater proportion of the populace lacking body parts, or suffering "open sores," in the South than in other places I've lived. The arrival of the Sears catalog was certainly a major cultural event, and we *did* all talk about it for days after it arrived--but it didn't signify what Crews said it did, and our conversations didn't take the form Crews claims, in my experience. And the story about keeping birds in the house, or birds spitting, bears no relation to anything like anything I ever heard, saw, or experienced in the South. Harry Crews is a very inventive fiction writer--and he's at it here, I think.

Sometimes Jim White seems very real, with genuine compassion for the people of whom he speaks, but much of his cosmological grandiloquence seems contrived, to me. Occasionally, he seems caught in his own pose. For instance, he declines to go into a bar, telling the film makers, "I got no use for a place like that," and his disgust seems like one of his more spontaneous, authentic reactions, quite genuine. But then in his narrative voice-over, obviously (from the difference in production values) recorded separately, he waxes lyrical about the "great beauty" of such "real" places. His contempt felt more authentic than his affectation of deep insight.

At least one of White's best aphorisms is, shall we say charitably, borrowed--"Between grief and nothing, I'll take grief." (Faulkner, the last page of The Wild Palms.) Leaves you wondering about some of the other good lines--whether they're borrowed, too. My favorite line in the movie, "I was looking for the gold tooth in God's crooked smile"--I certainly hope White didn't borrow that one, uncredited. But I just don't trust that it's original.

The posed musical numbers seem more like a Gothic caricature of someone's overwrought, and ill-researched, idea of the South, since few of them seem to be actual performances by local musicians. This is not documentary--this is affectation posing as discovery.

Now, on the plus side, parts of the film are an invaluable glimpse into the spiritual lives of what Southerners call "white trash." Though I'm the son of a rural Mississippi Baptist minister, I never had a chance to see any of this up-close in real life. This movie is, for a Southern Baptist boy, a nice chance to get to know something about a slim, unhappy slice of the South that ordinary Southern life would never allow him to see.

When the movie goes into local settings, and observes the lives and activities of the people, there's much that's worthwhile. Some of it is touching, some scary, some just bewildering. None of it has much to do with the Meaning of The South, or other overblown non-sense like that. But it has much to do with the hardscrabble efforts of some folks to get through life, well or badly, that most of us (thank God) will never see up-close and personal. To see it is very instructive, and very valuable if you can see it for itself, not as the filmmakers want you to.

Worth it for the music alone...
This movie is really a story about the influences in Jim White's life. As he personally discloses he is not a "native" to the South but that the South is in his blood and has made him who he is. As such this is a journey into that stream.

By the title it would seem that we are to meet some odd, eccentric, off the wall slice of Americana. Perhaps it is due to my background but I did not see the individuals in the film as odd at all. Different maybe but not odd or otherwise eccentric in a way that is shocking. They are just real people.

The film is overall a "religious" film in the sense that in these travels with these characters it is religion that defines who they are. It is ultimately a faith journey. And in this the film is quite beautiful. For anyone who has traveled in rural counties, whether in the South or in Appalachia country, religion is the defining feature. To understand this culture one must understand the faith. Jim White makes a decent host but sometimes he tries too hard to be deep or profound. He, like the viewer, still remains outside looking in.

Many of the shots, quite lovely at that, are choreographed and staged. Journey through prison, Pentecostal churches, a coal mine and other characteristic haunts such as a restaurant whose banner proclaims Jesus saves. Wonderfully quirky yet genuinely beautiful people.

But the highlight of the film is the music. Musicians play songs in eerily beautiful settings in an attempt to have the landscape appear as odd as the characters being portrayed. I suppose alt-country is a fitting label but the music is wonderful. Religious themes are tackled from an outsider's point of view, discussing the challenges of belief and doubt and the difficulties of life with lovely, haunting musicianship.

Overall it did not live up to the hype of its intent but it is still a wonderful film.