Wise Blood

The main thing about that Hazel Motes; he sure can't stand hucksterism. And he can smell it on you, too. Woe to you if you preach one thing and live something else. Doesn't matter what you preach, just be genuine about it. Motes comes back home from some war (WWII? Vietnam?) and, after finding his fly speck on the map of a small town nearly deserted, heads to the city to "do something I ain't never done before." The city has some fictional name, even though it looks more than a bit like Macon, GA. Even before he meets lonely drifters, whores, near-Lolitas, and preachers who use the name of Jesus like a weapon, he's decided he's going to do his own preaching. Just a genuine, no-frills approach, and no Jesus, either. His "church without Christ" acknowledges that man is already clean, and didn't need no Jesus shedding his blood on no cross. "What's dead stays that way." Perhaps Hazel is rebelling against the memory of his grandfather, a hellfire barker.

Hazel, absolutely brilliantly portrayed by Brad Dourif, stands on the hoods and roofs of cars and barks to passersby. Some listen, just like they would to a guy selling an apple peeler. Maybe what Hazel is selling makes sense to some of them, in some humanistic way. WISE BLOOD, director John Huston's adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's beloved novel, is an eccentric, incisive, and often grotesquely funny fable of redeption. Yes, that's right. Before the credits, Hazel will be redeemed in ways that perhaps were unforeseeable. Before we get there, we travel with him on a journey not easily described.

Motes even scores a disciple, a wide-eyed simpleton named Enoch Emery. He's quite the dimbulb, but he's sincere, willing even to commit theft to bring "a new Christ" to Hazel in the form of a shrunken mummy. Emery also has a curious fascination with primates, perhaps some sort of wry commentary on evolution, or maybe not. O'Connor was Catholic, by many accounts a Christian, but her considerable writing gifts were wielded to lampoon both sides of the Belief divide. Her statements on religion here are like razors, painful, giddy, ultimately sobering. Religion is like any other commodity being hawked. Fakes like Asa Hawks (Harry Dean Stanton) and Hoover Shoates (Ned Beatty) use their charisma in the name of Jesus for their own gains, monetarily or otherwise. Disingenuine. Hazel sees it, and his attempts to bring some justice to it ends tragically for more than one character, including himself.

Props also to Amy Wright as Sabbath Lily, Asa's lusty daughter on her own carnal mission. At one point, she cradles the shrunken mummy like Mary. This sort of imagery infuses O'Connor's works, with which I became familiar in college. Seems unfilmable, but Huston perfectly captures the tone (if not all of the commentary). How Huston, an atheist, managed to bring across the author's points so letter perfectly is miracle of such magnitude that it would take some time (and injury) for the preacher of The Church Without Christ to understand.