Jesus' Son
***
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Cornerhouse (Manchester)
Released in the UK by Fox on July 7, 2000; certificate 18; 109 minutes; country
of origin USA; aspect ratio 2.35:1
Directed by Alison Maclean; produced by
Elizabeth Cuthrell, Lydia Dean Pilcher, David Urrutia.
Written by Elizabeth Cuthrell, Oren Moverman, David
Urrutia; based on the book by Denis Johnson. Photographed by Adam
Kimmel; edited by Stuart Levy, Geraldine
Peroni.
CAST.....
Billy Crudup..... FH
Samantha Morton..... Michelle
Denis Leary..... Wayne
Jack Black..... Georgie
Will Patton..... John Smith
Greg Germann..... Dr. Shanis
Holly Hunter..... Mira
Dennis Hopper..... Bill
What we have here is one of the year's most difficult
films -- from a film critic's point of view. "Jesus' Son" is
effortless to watch and hard to recall. That was fine when I was in the cinema,
but now I'm at the keyboard, trying to convince you to see it, and all I
can recall is loosely tied together events, sections that seem wandered into
and inexplicable decisions by the characters.
But that is as it should be. This is the story
of a young man who starts out a wanderer and then becomes a drug addict.
Neither of these phases could be said to have reason or meaning. Still they
are hypnotic to watch.
We know the guy only as 'FH'. You can pretty much
guess what that stands for. It rhymes with "duck bed". He and some other
anonymous buddies, who shuffle around a small Midwestern town in the early
1970s, drift through houses, bars and other unofficial hangouts. At one of
these, FH (Billy Crudup) meets Michelle (Samantha Morton), a fascinating,
quiet, petite girl who soon takes him to bed for surprisingly tender lovemaking.
The morning after, he finds her injecting heroin at the breakfast table.
He has never seen anyone shoot up before, but seems curiously unaffected
by it, is enough of a vacuum to try it for himself, and soon finds that the
narcotic is running his life.
Up to and after this development, "Jesus' Son"
refuses to adopt traditional story structure. It is as meandering as many
of the films from the time in which it is set, and indeed has even been
photographed in the cheaply crisp and colourful style of a thirty-year old
road movie. Moments of tragedy and comic absurdity all unfold at the same
pace, side by side, seen by the idle camera as they would be through FH's
glazed eyes. There is a harrowing split-screen comparison of two junkies'
overdoses resulting in different fates. A Jarmuschian moment in a hospital
where two stoned orderlies deal with a patient complaining of "knife in the
head". Psychedelic drug fantasies wander onto the screen without warning.
And yet not once does the sound design louden, the pace of the editing quicken,
or the camera swerve.
I'm not exactly praising the discipline of the
director, Alison Maclean, but more her courage to let the material move so
stubbornly. The amazing thing is that we don't notice the rigid construction
-- Maclean's tactics work wonderfully, and we get involved in FH's haze.
Billy Crudup is well cast in the role -- he has the gift of keeping his body
language technically lifeless while always looking like he's about to speak.
He convinces us that FH is going nowhere, but still lets us hope for him;
his eyes and mouth achieve a weird limbo that suggest they may spring into
action at any time.
Strange, then, that the third act of "Jesus' Son"
doesn't work. This portion of the picture is easy to remember, because in
boring us, it breaks the hypnotic spell of the earlier passages. The
screenwriters try to let fresh air run into the story, as FH finds redemption;
but Maclean keeps up the quirky, cloudy ambience. FH's life starts to flow,
but the narrative doesn't, and it feels wrong to see the film's closing events
portrayed with a lack of focus, because in them FH finally opens his
eyes.
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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