Der Ketzer

I am not a reader of Flannery O'Conner, so I can't comment on her point, but I know she is considered a great American writer of Southern Gothic fiction, and that she only wrote two novels, one of which was made into this film.

I am familiar with Brad Dourif, who got an Oscar nomination for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, was most recently in Rob Zombie's Halloween, is familiar to TV viewers on "Deadwood," and is the voice of Chucky. He put himself in the very capable hands of a great director, John Huston, who won Oscars for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (writing and directing), and accumulated 13 other nominations for such classics as Sergeant York, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, The Asphalt Jungle, and Prizzi's Honor.

What we get is a dramedy that is more comedy than drama. Hazel Motes (Dourif), in reaction to his strict fundamentalist upbringing, starts a church that he calls The Church of Christ Without Christ. Now, that will go over well down here in the South! He meets an assortment of preachers/con-men (Harry Dean Stanton and Ned Beatty), a non-stop talker (Dan Shor), and an oversexed 17-year-old (Amy Wright). The collective wit of the entire cast in this film is about equal to a bowl of soup, and that is what makes it funny.

One of the first of Dourif's over 120 appearances, and it is a hoot!

Vignette styled look at southern towns, corruption, hypocrisy, and the hidden 'evils' of evangelism. Has a atmosphere that is so thick you can almost taste it.

Dourif's performance is so good, so solid, and so powerful that it literally propels you through the story no matter which avenue it takes (and it does take some strange avenues). His performance should have won him the Academy award and shows just how poorly used he has been. This is for all those who think Chucky in CHILD'S PLAY is the best thing he has done.

Although never completely satisfying, the final 20 minutes do have some rather 'odd' twists that may stay with you even after it's long over.

Hazel Motes returns from the conflict overseas, (Vietnam? Korea? World War 11? Flannery O'Connor's Deep South is a timeless place, cut off from reality and the rest of the world). Instantly we can recognize he's not, as we say over here, the full shilling or is a few sandwiches short of a picnic and in no time at all has taken to preaching his own peculiar gospel and founding his own church, (The Church of Truth without Jesus Christ, Crucified), and whose message appears to be, 'save yourself 'cause sure as Hell the Lord won't save you'.

He's an isolationist but he takes up with a supposedly blind preacher and his sexually voracious daughter while an idiot boy, several sandwiches shorter of a picnic than even Hazel, takes up with him. The only clue to his behaviour seems to lie in a few flashbacks to when he was a boy in the house of his fire-and-brimstone preaching grandfather, (Huston himself), and had a penchant for putting rocks in his shoes. Yes, you think to yourself, it will all end in tears.

Huston, of course, is in his element. Casting himself, however briefly, as the craggy Bible-belter is just up his street and this kind of Gothic horror-comedy brings out the best in him and there is a good deal of comedy to be found here; a wink is as good as a nod to a blind horse. But the film probably wouldn't be anything without the superlative performance of Brad Dourif who seems born to play the gimlet-eyed Hazel; the problem was, of course, that Dourif was born to play Billy Bibbit in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and was never able to shake off that Southern Gothic not-quite-right-in-the-head character. It was what he was good at and casting directors never let him forget it. But if "Wise Blood" had been the only movie he'd made he would still deserve a footnote in the annals of acting.

This is not an easy movie to get a handle on, so I'm not surprised reviewers either love it or hate it. Now, I've neither read the O'Connor novel nor lived in the South nor read the Bible since Sunday school. As a result, I have to take the movie as just that, a movie, without benefit of outside comparison.

I get the impression that underneath all the black humor and exaggerated characters, something profound is going on. But exactly what? Perhaps you need that outside reference to penetrate the subtext. Then again, perhaps the profound subtext is illusory, like Hazel's view of Christianity, such that the narrative amounts to little more than artfully eccentric entertainment, courtesy sly old John Huston.

The following are what I hope are helpful interpretations, generally not emphasized by other reviewers, many of whose commentaries were, nonetheless, very helpful to me.

Above all, Hazel has come to hate hypocrisy. His motto appears to be: If you own the Truth, then live it. For Hazel, Truth is the illusory nature of Christian metaphysics, (a disavowal that doesn't necessarily equate with atheism), and by golly he's going to live that truth in his own peculiar way. Thus, the hard-eyed obsessive stare, the refusal of commitment sex (Sabbath) but not commercial sex (an over-priced 4 dollars), and the rather heartless rejection of the pathetically friendless Enoch. In short, like his adversary, the true Christian proselytizer, Hazel is a driven man.

The trouble is that he knows only one way of spreading his truth-- by preaching angrily on street corners. Worse, his gospel is one of pure and insistent negatives (perhaps why atheism has never been popular), for example,"when you're dead, you're dead!" -- not exactly a crowd-pleaser. Nor, for that matter, is he going to allow Preacher Sholes (Ned Beatty) to dilute that negative message with a crowd-pleasing brand of hucksterism. Hazel may be strange, but he is no hypocrite.

Now, it's clear that the broken-down jalopy means more to Hazel than just another hunk of iron. He's always praising it, even as it coughs smoke and bleeds fluids. It's his chariot, and while it might not take him to heaven, it will take him to the next town to spread his Word. Note that he even uses it to slay the pathetic pretender who would take his place on the street corner. Moreover, it's not until Hazel loses that chariot (hilariously) that he takes on the role of the martyred prophet. After all, rejection now means he has no other place he can get to.

For me, the most revealing part of the film is Enoch's (Dan Shor) pathetic efforts at establishing contact with another human being. Huston, of course, doesn't play up the sentiment, but it's there anyway. Also, this may constitute the most damaging perspective on the dominant Christian culture of the movie-- even more damaging than Hazel's centerpiece non-belief. After all, if Jesus' message is unconditional love, why is Enoch alone and abandoned in an empty world of nominal Jesus followers. Nor, for that matter, is Hazel's brand of soulless non-belief any help either.

Then too, just count the number of happy smiles in the film-- practically none, except when the kids are reaching out to the fake human, Gongo the gorilla. Poor Enoch thinks that by donning Gongo's costume, people will finally reach out to him. But there's no such contact in this atomized world of social rejects. In fact, a dominant theme appears to be just that, rejection-- Hazel rejects Jesus, Sabbath, his landlady, Enoch, Preacher Sholes, while even the cop rejects Hazel's jalopy, at the same time, the whole seedy community rejects Enoch. Quite a commentary on an environment where Jesus is advertised on every big rock and sold on every street corner as a friend to the friendless.

Now, I don't know if there is any particular moral to the foregoing, but if there is, I suspect it's not a comforting one. Anyway, the movie is full of colorful characters, offbeat situations, and is never, never predictable. So, like the film or not, I expect that it's one you're not likely to forget.

Preaching the Church Without Christ, Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) tells anyone that will listen that he wants a church that is free from salvation and dogma, a church "where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way". With existentialist overtones, he says, `Where you came from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it." In John Huston's darkly satiric film Wise Blood, adapted from Flannery O' Connor's first novel, Haze is caught in a struggle between the obsessions of his past and his desire to live the truth.

The more he resists his rigid Christian upbringing represented by his fundamentalist grandfather, the closer he is drawn to it. No matter what he does, Jesus moves "from tree to tree in the back of his mind, the wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark." Raised in a predominately Protestant area, Flannery O' Connor was a devout Catholic whose novels and short stories paint a tragi-comic portrait of Bible Belt evangelism and the hypocrisy that thrives in decaying Southern towns. While the film is a human rather than a Christian interpretation and the ending is simply tragic without being spiritually revealing, it still remarkably captures the essence of the novel and, if nothing else, will send viewers scurrying to their nearest library.

Set sometime in the mid-twentieth century, Haze has returned from the war with a big chip on his shoulder. Without joy he returns to his family home in Eastrod, Tennessee but on finding it run down and deserted takes a train to the fictional Taulkinham. Here he is seen by everyone that he meets to be a preacher even though he strongly protests. Even the taxi driver tells him that his hat and "a look in your face somewheres" make him look like a preacher. Brad Dourif's appearance suggests Haze with a "nose like the shrike's bill, eyes the color of pecan shells and set so deep they are like passages leading nowhere." When he meets a blind street preacher Asa Hawks (Harry Dean Stanton) and his fifteen-year old daughter, Sabbath Lily (Amy Wright), childhood memories are reactivated and he proudly tells them that he doesn't believe in anything.

With a zeal that might be described as the passion of the anti-Christ, Haze buys a broken down "rat-coloured" car that becomes the rock upon which he builds his new church, the Church Without Christ. Wearing a preacher's bright blue suit and black hat, Haze stands on the hood of his car and addresses a handful of stragglers, spewing his contempt for Christianity. "Listen you people", he says, "I'm going to preach there was no fall because there was nothing to fall from and no redemption because there was no fall and no judgment because there wasn't the first two. Nothing matters but that Jesus was a liar." When anyone criticizes his car, Hazel defends himself with the statement, "Nobody with a good car needs to be justified." Haze attracts an assortment of mostly unlikable characters: con-artists, frauds, and women without moral discernment.

While some are repugnant, others are simply amusing and the film remains watchable because of its savage humour and colourful language. For example, when one character describes the Welfare woman who cared for him, "She sho was ugly. She had theseyer brown glasses and her hair was so thin it looked like ham gravy trickling over her skull", and, "a red-haired waitress at Walgreen's has "green eyes set in pink" so that she looks like a picture of a Lime Cherry Surprise." One of the most compelling characters, Enoch Emery (Dan Shor), a slow-witted eighteen-year old with "wise blood" like his daddy, provides the comic relief. Enoch is so desperate for friendship that, mimicking the travelling Gonga the Gorilla show, he steals the gorilla costume and sneaks up on people hoping they will shake his hand. In another sequence, thinking it may be the "new Jesus", Enoch steals a shrunken mummy from the museum and gives it to Haze.

When Haze becomes fed up with the town and its inhabitants, he tries to leave but is stopped by a sheriff who tells him he isn't going anywhere and proceeds to push his car into a lake in a parody of the baptism ritual. His behavior becomes more and more extreme, having decided that he cannot live in both worlds, he chooses to live according to his convictions. Lacking the ability to express love, he internalizes the car's destruction and now sees himself as "not clean". He stuffs his shoes with glass and rocks and wraps barbed wire across his chest, then throws lime on his face. Suggesting a parallel with the story of Paul on the road to Damascus, he loses his sight but regains his vision. As strongly as he has denied Christ's presence, however, he now cannot resist it. In spite of himself, Haze achieves the grace that he sought to avoid.