Hard Country

I didn’t plan to do movie reviews on this blog. But then I came across Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus by Andrew Douglas. It appeared on DVD last year, but appeared on the BBC back in 2004. This movie has a little bit of everything for anyone into the mystique of the poor white south. What stands out to me is how ambitious it is in taking on so many difficult literary devices and offering commentary on them without actually being a documentary! Jim White is the singer-songwriter whose album inspired the whole idea, and he serves as the viewers guide and muse throughout the film. In order to set up the film and get to its heart, I have to include some of what I think are the more important sayings, stories, and events Jim uses to start off the journey.

I should note that I found out that I could finger or flatpick along with the whole movie soundtrack. It has a distinct play-ability to it. The opening kicks off with this brief radio/TV/glossalalia-tongues that is strange and beautiful. Stories form the lynch-pin of this movie. The whole thing is less of one single story and more a series of collected spun yarns. That’s important to know. Every sight, every sound has a place. Some movies aren’t meant to be watched closely. Some filmmakers know what the audience wants: escape, and so they provide it. This is not that kind of movie. I think Searching For the Wrong-Eyed Jesus should be watched again and again, rewound, slowed down, absorbed word for word and note for note. Instead of providing a distraction, this movie works all of our senses. The viewer has to tune up her eyes and ears. She has to be ready to listen to stories. She has to care about Place, and by that I do mean the idea as well as the geography. She has to want mythology and religion. If that desire isn’t present then I don’t think the viewer of this particular film is going to get it. Now by saying that I’m not promising anything at the end. I’m not promising any glorious new revelations. I’m not even promising a great ride along the way. But I think when you watch you’ll find it worth it. I don’t know if I agree with Jim White that it’s a spiritual experience. If it is I think he’ll have to write a Scripture to go with it. And then somebody at the United Pentecostal Church we visit in the film will be sure and burn it as heresy.

The film opens with a boy walking alongside bayou asking:

“Do you know what you’re looking for?

Do you think this place is on the map?

Does it have roads you can walk down?

Will you know it when you see it?”

The film starts right off with a need to cover up. In order to enter the world we want to see we need to essentially hide who we are or the locals won’t talk to us. Jim White says:

“Seems to me if you wanna come and sort of infiltrate the South and learn about it, learn something important about it, you’re going to need the right car. You can’t show up in some Land Rover or some Lexus or something and expect poor folks to talk to you, tell you what’s in their heart.”

He offers Jimmy Tuck a hundred a day to use his 1970 Chevy with a good big engine in it. Next Jim lays out sort of a coda for the journey. Because we are not Southerners we need eyes to see, but as outsiders. We want a fresh perspective. We need to make use of this.

“I was dragged to the South when I was five years of age from southern California and I resisted the immensity of the south, I just resisted it because its an overpowering culture. I desperately wanted to leave from the age of about thirteen I just couldn’t figure out how to do it. See that swamp there? I couldn’t see the beauty in it. See, when you’re growing up in this it seems like there’s a blanket over the whole world. It feels like someone’s, like Gulliver when he was travelin and the Lilliputians tied him down, you feel tied down. When I left the South I’d get someplace like Amsterdam Holland or Tel Aviv Israel, some place like that, and suddenly it’d smell like the south. Someone’d say something or I’d see a tree or some gentle moment would sneak up on me and I would remember the value of what I couldn’t find when I was here.”

“Until you’ve walked away from it you can’t see it. And I decided I’m gonna come back to the south and become a southerner as best I can. I will never be a southerner, I’m this imitation of a southerner, but in a way I feel like that brings me closer to God. Because I’ve chosen. . . its almost like a form of divinity. I’ve chosen my divinity rather than my divinity choosing me.”

Jim doesn’t really clarify how the South is a form of divinity. His Southern imitation is spiritual and leads him closer to God, a form of divinity. But his decision to choose rather than be chosen is quite interesting. These words are immediately followed by an enthusiasm for scrapping.

“Man they got some good garbage here. I mean they got some good stuff. They got corrugated tin sittin on the side of the road. Good used carpet. Some fine lumber right in there. Lord, that’s a big old book case. Its my kinda road. Junkyard road.”

So this journey is doing two things here: we’re analyzing inorder to encounter and even adopt divinity and second, we’re scrapping, picking up what’s been discarded because of its aesthetic value. Let’s pick and choose what we find useful. In this way, we are liberated from fear of control and yet we’re able to appreciate what we see for its unique, natural beauty. I won’t analyze this too deeply, yet. I’ll just let Jim’s words speak for themselves.

In the next scene Jim says “We don’t need no guns.” We see the only African American man in the whole film open a rusted out trunk to reveal a wrapped statue of Jesus. Jim laughs and slaps his knee. “How much you askin for it?” The black man says “500.” Jim laughs again. “I’ll give you sixty for it.” “Sixty-five.” “Alright. Alright, you gotta help me put it in the trunk though.” “Alright.” “Its not heavy is it?” The African American man laughs. “Yessa.” We see a wide shot of the junk yard as the camera pans the three men rescuing the wrapped Sacred heart Jesus from these dead cars and placing it in the 1970 Chevy. The camera lands with Jimmy Dowd in the foreground sitting on a jacked up gray Buick singin’ “There’s been a murder here today, blood stains on the wall. . . ”

The Jesus is placed in the trunk so that its hanging out with the door left open. The burlap he is shrouded in is tied shut. In the next scene the burlap has come undone as the car cruises down the highway.

Jim begins a story:

“So we were ridin fast. Night time. We were high as hell. Earl was ridin on the hood with a hatchet in his hand in case he saw the warlocks. And uh a tree was comin up with a low overhang and he swung that axe at the limb—big live oak limb—and the axe hung and Earl just disappeared off the hood ‘cuz we were goin thirty miles an hour when he did it. (Jim laughs) And it looked like the warlocks got him. Turns out he was just so high and so drunk that he had held on to the axe handle and it had pulled him off. He was layin in the middle of the road just laughin like hell. Most people it would have killed but he was one of them tough, insane, Louisiana people. I guess he’s either dead or in prison now. He was one of those types. He probably grew up in a nice little house like that there. (We see a house on stilts in the swamp off the highway.) Broke his momma’s heart.”

“I used to live in New York City and I’d ride my bike over that damn Brooklyn Bridge everyday. And uh there was a white line on it. I used to try to get my bike to sit right on the white line. The tire to touch it. And I noticed that if I looked down directly at where my tire was I could never keep it on that white line. But if I looked up and sortof glazed my view of things that I could keep it on that white line. It was a peculiar awakening that sometimes if you look directly at something its inapprehendable. Sometimes you’ve gotta look away before you can achieve something.”

It seems to me that what Jim is describing here is very simple. He’s describing an abstract worldview. Its a way of seeing the world without looking at it directly. Isn’t that what any sort of academic discussion of an object attempts?

“You don’t see the south when you’re ridin along on the interstate. You pull off and there’s a Cracker Barrel or Pier One Imports or Dillards or whatever. But you go five or ten miles off the interstate and you get the south as it was fifty years ago or a hundred years ago. And you can’t do that in many places.”

We encounter many people and places on this journey. A junkyard, barbershop, a trailer park, a men’s prison, an antique store, a United Pentecostal Church, a radio station, someone riddling a stop sign with bullet holes, a “cut and shoot” bar, and ultimately a lonely highway at night. Southern religion is probably the major theme of the movie. Hard religion. Fire and Brimstone religion. It would seem as though real religion is found in the intersection between the threat of hell and the promise of escape, whether that be in a Pentecostal service or a “cut and shoot” bar.

“For the uninitiated walkin’ in seein’ a healin’ service or a spirit filled church in full bloom. . . . its quite a wondrous sight. There’s a real power there that you can’t deny. Its pretty incredible. Theres a lot of love there and theres a lot of theres a presence. Its hard to explain. Its just so hard to explain. Things happen there that defy explanation and you feel like youre in the presence of God. And it feels so strong. It gets sort of addictive. You go to a Presbyterian church or a Catholic church and it’s a lot of friendly talk but it doesn’t give you any clue that beyond your mind that theres some immensity that loves you. You get in one of these churches and the first thing they do is set their mind at the door. Come walk in with your heart. And it feels real good sometimes to set your mind at the door and let your heart do the talking.”

Now the only trouble with this narrative is that it is impossible to live. None of us can truly be outsiders. We’re always a part of something. The people you encounter will never really trust you if you don’t engage with them or attempt to enter their world. In other words, drive by filming works but drive by believing doesn’t.

“In a poor world like this gravity seems a lot stronger. Its pullin you down into the earth and everyday it’s a fight not to disappear the way the gravity’s pullin you. Maybe if you’re going to disappear, you’re going to disappear on your own terms. To find your own. . . .to make your own . . . . to be the guru of your own little Tibet. You know the beauty of the people who have no wealth but still enrich their world with their stories and their songs and their language. You could go into any one of these places. . . . you could go into any one of these mobile homes and you could hear the best story or the saddest story that you would hear in your whole life.”

“If you’ve come here lookin’ for some sort of essential truth about the south or some spiritual revelation then you’re not going to find it by accident or by grace. These people know about it. I guess they have what Flannery OConnor called “The Wise Blood.” The blood rules them, they don’t rule the blood. If you wanna know the secrets of the south you gotta get it in your blood and you ain’t gonna get a transfusion from the blood bank for it.”

“Well. I guess this is good as anyplace to leave you. I apologize. I wish I could stay with you while you go and look for what you’re looking for but Jimmy Tuck needs his car back and I value my life so I’m gonna take it to him. So long.”

What I find so valuable about this movie is not its attempt at spirituality. I love the whole mix of people, places and thoughts. I don’t consider the experience divine. Its very human. We’re watching a confused muse point to a lot of things without any real safe place from which to offer conjecture. That makes it a frail human endeavor. I like that. The music and places and themes chosen are off beat, renegade, and out of the way. I wonder whether most Southerners would really care about this movie. It was made for the BBC. Its whole nature denotes an heir of artsy otherness. The makers keep a safe distance from the people even as they enjoy them. That puts the film out of the reach of most insiders and that’s unfortunate.

—Reviewed by Chris L. Rice

Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus

Written by Steve Haisman

Directed by Andrew Douglas (a commercial director)

Edited by Michael Elliot

Produced by Martin Rosenbaum

With performances by Jim White, Johnny Dowd, Handsome Family, Trailer Bride, 16 Horsepower, David Johansen, Lee Sexton, and Harry Crews

Soundtrack: http://www.luakabop.com/WrongEyedJesus/index.html

Shot in Ferriday Louisiana, Ferriday First UPC, Louisiana-Concordi Parish Correctional Facility, Ridgcrest, Louisiana Ray Sheffield’s Where Jesus is Lord Truckstop Diner, Florida Radio Station WNRG, Virginia Jesus Outreach Church, Virginia Black Diamond Coalmine, Kentucky