Wise Blood (1979)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Wise Blood (1979) – J. Huston

I haven’t read Flannery O’Connor’s book (her first, from 1952), which must be quite weird, because this (supposedly faithful) adaptation by director John Huston is also very strange.  It is hard to get a good grasp of the central character, Hazel Motes, who returns from the war (WWI in the novel, but given the 1970s cars on display here, perhaps Vietnam for the movie) and soon takes up preaching an anti-religion (“the Church of Christ without Christ”).  Brad Dourif plays Motes as perpetually antagonized – by almost everyone he meets, but especially by con men posing as preachers (as played by Harry Dean Stanton or Ned Beatty).  Perhaps this has something to do with his (now deceased) grandfather, played by Huston himself, who was also a preacher.  A distant memory has Hazel filling his shoes with rocks as a child, potentially as a punishment for sinning.  Soon, he turns to similar self-punishment as an adult (after a particularly violent act against a false prophet).  But this synopsis may make Motes seem more focused than he appears in the movie – he is purposeful but his goals are unclear (perhaps even to himself?).  An odd subplot involves another young man, new to the city, who wants to help Motes find a “new Jesus” but ends up running around in a gorilla costume.  To be honest, without reading the book, I’m at a loss when trying to discern the deeper themes of the movie (based on O’Connor’s Catholicism, they say).  In the end, Motes is sacrificed but has his spiritual purging led to salvation? Or is Huston criticizing the sort of lunacy that can lead to such an end?  All told, the movie’s resistance to easy understanding makes it that much more compelling – and its dead-end ‘70s’ vibe is always a pleasure (see also Fat City, 1972).