Wise Blood (1979)
Directed by: John Huston.
Written by: Benedict Fitzgerald & Michael Fitzgerald based on the novel by Flannery O'Connor.
Starring: Brad Dourif (Hazel Motes), Dan Shor (Enoch Emory), Harry Dean Stanton (Asa Hawks), Amy Wright (Sabbath Lily), Mary Nell Santacroce (Landlady), Ned Beatty (Hoover Shoates), William Hickey (Preacher), John Huston (Grandfather).
John Huston’s Wise Blood, based on the novel by Flannery O’Connor, is a very strange movie indeed. It is a redemption story of sorts – the story a non-believer, a nihilist really, who comes back into the fold and embraces Jesus in the end, although by then he has lost pretty much everything else in his life, so it may well have been better for him not to find Jesus (at least, in this life). It is a story of holy and unholy fools – crooks and charlatans – although according the movie at least, that doesn’t mean that Jesus isn’t real.
The main character in the film is Hazel Motes and he’s played with single minded determination by a perfectly cast Brad Dourif. He returns from the war (the film never specifies which one – although O’Connor’s novel in set in post WWII, the film however doesn’t have the trappings of a period piece – perhaps due to budget constraints – so it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say Vietnam), and goes back to his small, Southern hometown. There is a new highway there – opened, he’s told, just long enough for everyone to drive away from town. None of his family is left – we glimpse his preacher Grandfather (played by Huston himself) – is flashbacks, but no one else. Hazel ends up heading into the city, where he plans to start street preaching. But he is not a typical street preacher, talking about how Jesus saves – just the opposite really. His is a “Church without Christ” - “where the blind don’t see and the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way”. Despite all his supposed hatred of Jesus, Hazel has the passion of a true zealot – he rarely talks of anything other than his Church, and spreading his “gospel”. If Wise Blood is anything, it is a reminder of that old saying – the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference. Hazel doesn’t really hate Jesus – he’s just mad at him, perhaps because of what happened during the war (he says he has an injury, but doesn’t want people to know where), or perhaps because of the fire and brimstone his grandfather preached (which scared him so much, he wet himself).
While in the city, Hazel meets a series of fools, crooks and charlatans. He isn’t there long before he finds a new follower – the hapless Enoch Emory (Dan Shor), who becomes committed to him despite the cruelty in which Hazel treats him. Enoch is clearly a lonely, somewhat dimwitted young man, who will eventually end up in a gorilla suit in another ill advised obsession. There is Asa Hawks (the great Harry Dean Stanton), a supposedly blind street preacher, and his daughter Sabbath Lily (Amy Wright). They are scam artists – he isn’t really blind, despite what his “clipping” says (he supposedly was going to blind himself for Jesus). Sabbath Lily sets her sets on Hazel herself. There’s Hoover Shoates (Ned Beatty), who hears Hazel’s pitch, and likes it – he feels there is a lot of money to be made from it, but when Hazel doesn’t get on board – it isn’t a scam to him – Shoates simply goes out and hires someone to give the same sermon (William Hickey). Finally, there is Hazel’s landlady (Mary Nell Santacroce), who seems so kindly – but of course, even she has something else on her mind.
There is nothing new about redemption stories – and yet Wise Blood is one of the strangest ones you will see. It isn’t really about a saint among sinners – we see Hazel Motes do a hell of lot of bad things. It is the work of a cynical Christian – but a Christian just the same. For the most part, the film follows O’Connor’s novel fairly closely – even if Huston initially had a different interpretation – he thought he’d be making a satire about Southern religion, which in a way, I guess he was – he was still the right choice to direct. Huston is one of the few directors who was able to take difficult, literary material and turn it into a film that is both faithful to the novel, and works as film itself. The film isn’t perfect – I find, in particular, that the scenes leading to the ending could use a little more clarity – but mainly, it is a fine adaptation of a difficult novel.
Lots of things helped here – including, oddly enough, the lack of a budget. It is a small budgeted film, and so Huston shot mainly on location in Macon, Georgia – using the rundown city as a perfect backdrop to the film. The lack a definitive time period works here (I often don’t like, as specificity is the soul of narrative – here though it makes it a more quintessential American story). The cast of character actors could hardly be improved upon – Dourif apparently wanted to add more nuance to Hazel, but Huston rightly knew that he was a one note character – whatever he embraces, he embraces fully. Harry Dean Stanton delivers one of his finest in a long line of morally dubious conmen. Amy Wright is a wicked joy as Sabbath Lily. Ned Beatty all smiles as he steals from you – and Hickey is wonderfully pathetic as his sidekick. Santacroce sneaks up on you as the unnamed Landlady – helping in those final scenes.
If Wise Blood doesn’t quite rank up with Huston’s best films, that is because of the strength of his resume – from The Maltese Falcon to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in the 1940s to Prizzi’s Honor and The Dead in the 1980s, and much in between, Huston had a varied, wonderful directing career. Wise Blood is a little seen, underrated late career highlight for him – and everyone else involved.
