Black Snake Moan Review

Before the credits roll, an outrageous and screamingly obvious 70s exploitation tone is set. The plot is rudimentary: Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) finds out his wife is cheating on him with his best friend; Rae (Christina Ricci) says goodbye to her military boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake).

Writer/director Brewer quickly jacks things up: as soon as Ronnie gets on the bus, little white Rae is on her knees, with the camera focused below her waist, in a state of commotion; the sun has barely set before she’s sharing a motel bed with a big black man. When she asks for cash, he reminds her that she called him. Rae heads out to a party with friends, a night that ends badly with an aborted ride home from Ronnie’s oppportunistic friend Gill (Michael Raymond-James).

The sequence is characterized by odd camera angles and highly saturated colors, an attempt to convey Rae’s overheated sexuality—while the term “nymphomania” isn’t used, plenty of synonyms are tossed about. Rae is left underdressed at the side of the road outside the house of Lazarus—itself a name pointing straight to the Bible, in which a man named Lazarus is resurrected by Jesus.

We’re evidently meant to see that Lazarus, a man who makes his living fron the soil and releases the devil inside through his music, is ripe for resurrection. He’s down in the dumps, sure, but it’s hard to figure why he thinks Jesus meant for him to help Rae change her ways—the reason given for his chaining her up. (Also because, in her sexual/drug-induced mindlessness, she keeps running away from his kindly nursing care.) Unless I missed something, there’s scant evidence that Lazarus is an especially religious man—it’s not like Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets—so it just seems like an excuse to have Ricci parade around in her underwear.

Ricci has a very fine body, and turns in a fine performance, but the sharpest edge of her whole nearly-naked appearance is provided by her diminutive height. Because she’s so much shorter than Jackson and some of the other men, she comes across more as a victim than a sexual predator. (Her one sexual conquest is with someone her own height.) That makes her more of a pitiable figure, a woman who’s clearly been abused in her youth and one who has little idea how to communicate with adults, other than through her sexuality.

Jackson brings great dramatic weight to his character and dignity to the story. He’s a weary man, comfortable enough in his own skin not to get too down and depressed after he quickly recovers from the shock of the betrayal by his wife and “best” friend. And why should he? He can barely turn around before an angel—in the person of pharmacist Angela (S. Epatha Merkerson)—is ready to step to his side.

Justin Timberlake says all the words with the correct enunciation and sets off the proper emotional fireworks, but he still comes across to me as a lightweight. You never feel any danger when he’s angry and threatening, and his words of love feel hollow.

Throughout the picture, the initial over-the-top images and musical accents—which carry the story well enough until the chaining begins—gradually tapers off. Then what’s left is the residue of redemption, a theme which could be fascinating from a Southern Baptist point of view, but that’s presented in a fairly damp, lackadaisical fashion.

Brewer treats the characters with a lot of tenderness, yet you can’t help feeling that a little chainsaw action would have helped galvanize things to the point where the redemption of Rae makes sense. Maybe it would have helped if Lazarus was a bootlegger instead of a farmer. Ultimately Black Snake Moan is a great title and poster in search of a good story.