MP3: “Stackolee” by Samuel L Jackson
Craig Brewer follows his 2005 critical darling Hustle & Flow with a deeply weird but ultimately (and improbably) fun and funny film, one which seems to need it’s own new genre just to be classified in—call it inspirational exploitation.
The title refers to one of the main characters’ name for the voice in his head that calls up negative emotions and can’t be dismissed, although drink, the blues and the friendship of someone similarly afflicted can certainly help drown it out.
It’s a voice that Christina Ricci’s sexually-abused Rae is pretty familiar with, and for her it means ominous flashbacks that somehow translate into a sort of raging, painful nymphomania that nothing save doing it with whoever’s nearest can calm.
I don’t know enough about human psychology to speak to how accurate Brewer’s take on the causes and symptoms of nymphomania really is, but my initial reaction is that it can’t be very; he studiously avoids ever actually using the word “nymphomania,” contributing to the tall tale-like unreality of the film, which is full of superstitious characters.
Samuel L. Jackson plays Lazarus, a southern farmer who used to be a bluesman and used to be happily married, up until his wife Adriane Lenox left him…for his own brother.
Meanwhile Rae’s boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake, with a southern accent) has left her alone to do a tour of Iraq, so that when her “wickedness” and “wildness” drive her to screw, drink and drug uncontrollably, no one’s there to help her.
The damaged pair’s paths cross when Lazarus finds Rae beaten badly and feverish in her panties and tiny halter top alongside his road. He tends to her wounds and sickness in secret, fearing the fate of a black man with a half-naked, half-dead white woman in his house, and seeks out gossip on who she is and the way she is.
At some point, he decides it’s a good idea to chain her to his radiator, bellowing by way of explanation to her that, “God saw fit to put you in my path, and I fix to cure you of your wickedness!”
The cure involves some down home cooking, plenty of blues, a few lectures from his reverend buddy and that big-ass.
There’s a rather touching melodrama about damaged friends (Jackson and Ricci) and lovers (Ricci and Timberlake, Jackson and S. Epahta Merkerson’s flirty pharmacist) being able to heal one another, the power of the blues and gospel music, and the cure-alls of faith and a faithful marriage at the movie’s heart.
But these messages are couched in a film that involves Ricci wearing little more than panties and a barely-there halter top, crawling around on her hands and knees, and moaning while wrapping herself in a chain. With more women’s prison imagery than most women’s prison movies and more close-ups of denim Daisy Dukes than the Dukes of Hazzard remake, Brewer sure does invest a lot of energy in making the “wickedness” seem more titillating than the marriage bed (though watching shirtless and sexy Timberlake and Ricci chew one another’s faces makes for a pretty good pro-marriage commercial).
Jackson is in Jules mode for long stretches, and it’s always fun to watch Jackson yell, be it at sharks, snakes, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine or a chained-up Ricci. It turns out to be equally fun to watch him pluck at a guitar and sing about snake voices as a portentous thunderstorm crashes around his rickety old Southern Gothic house.
Ricci, for her part, has a fragility perfectly suited for the prickly vulnerability of the role, and projects her inner little girl and world-weary sexpot pretty much simultaneously.
Though occasionally very silly (I still haven’t figured out why Jackson doesn’t give Ricci a T shirt or something to cover up while he’s holding her hostage), Black Snake Moan has two strong central performances, and Brewer wrings a great deal of suspense out of the inherent tension of their situation, which, on the outside, looks about as fucked up as can be, and headed toward inevitable disaster.
TRAILER:
i want to see this so bad