Wise blood (1979)

John Huston is an eccentric director and Wise blood, based on a novel by Flannery O'connor is a loony film. I watched the film before reading the book, which I am happy about now, taking account of Huston's very personal relation to a story. The main character, Hazel, is elusive, remains elusive. He is an angry man and it is his anger that drives him but I am never sure where he is going next. This makes everything in the movie unexpected. Things just happen and something new waits around the corner. It is a strange, strange world. Everybody thinks Hazel is a preacher, because of his hat, and he ends up becoming a sort of a preacher, building a church of his own, a church without Christ, a church where the blind remain blind and the dead stay that way. On his erratic journey Hazel bumps into a string of misfits: a sham preacher and his daughter, who lusts for Hazel. Then there is Emery, a loney guy who wants somebody to be his friend in the cold-hearted town. And there is the businessman who wants to make a dollar or two out of Hazel's evangelical performances on top of a scruffy car. Some reviewers have celebrated Wise blood as a deep film about religious redemption. For my own part, I had difficulties in relating to the 'spiritual' change in the main character. Personally, I enjoyed the film as a sad piece about loneliness and the weird ways in which we try to reach out to each other. The positively frantic acting of the main characters is brilliant, perfectly in synch with the offbeat, eerie atmosphere of the film. My impression of Wise blood can be summed up this way: I loved it for being weirdly comic, but I couldn't make much of the story. Do you like southern gothic? Watch this.