not at all what you might expect

Rating: 8/10 (5 August 2007)

The plot is like something out of one of those decadent-Southern melodramas by William Faulkner or Tennessee Williams:
A morally righteous, blues-playing cuckold finds a scantily clad nymphomaniac beaten to a bloody pulp and left for dead on the side of the road. He carries the initially unconscious woman to his shack where he proceeds to nurse her back to physical and spiritual health. Oh, and, by the way, did I mention that she's chained to a radiator a good deal of the time?
Based on the overheated premise and imagery alone, "Black Snake Moan" could easily have been either a sadomasochistic horror film or a kinky sex fantasy (or a twisted combination of both). Instead, writer/director Craig Brewer clearly sees this material as a return to the great Southern Gothic tradition of the literary past, replete with hints of potential madness, elaborate sexual perversion, and an undercurrent of racial tension to go along with all the heat and humidity.
It is difficult to pigeonhole "Black Snake Moan," for it is neither a parody of an exploitation film nor an exploitation film itself. Very little of it is actually played for laughs, and that, I think, is what makes the movie successful in the long run. It attacks the material with such a knowing earnestness that we are swept up into the drama despite being supremely conscious at all times of just how preposterous the whole thing is.
As a thoughtful artist, Brewer uses his disturbing imagery to plumb the turbid depths of his audience's subconscious. The sight of a young woman helplessly chained to a radiator, for instance, inevitably conjures up images of slavery, rape, sexual and racial dominance, etc. in the viewer's mind (the irony, of course, is that, in this case, it is the black man who has the white person in chains). Yet, once we strip away all the aberrant imagery from the story, what we're ultimately left with is a simple tale of two bruised and potentially self-destructive individuals reaching out to one another in ways that the society around them and even they themselves can't quite understand. The relationship between the farmer, Lazarus, and the nympho, Rae, is a richly detailed and complex one, for despite his distasteful approach, Lazarus is, in reality, a compassionate man reaching out to a stranger in need to show her that there is a better, more spiritually fulfilling way for people to live. Through their superb performances, Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci (who has lost much of her baby-fat and moon-face and become very sexy indeed) turn what could have been two "decadent Southern" caricatures into fully-rounded human beings. There are also very fine performances by Justin Timberlake, John Cothran Jr., and S. Epatha Merkerson in support of the two leads.
Brewer has paced his film just right, giving the two characters time to develop their relationship amidst the more sensationalistic plot elements floating around them. He also makes the sweltering Deep South setting an integral part of the drama.
Don't let the more unsavory aspects of the imagery and the plotting scare you off this movie. "Black Snake Moan" is really an inspiring and moving story about how spiritual redemption and emotional healing come through simple acts of human kindness.