Wise Blood
Directed by John Huston
Written by Benjamin and Michael Fitzgerald from a novel by Flannery O’Connor
1979/US
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Criterion Channel
Hazel: Your conscience is a trick, it don’t exist, and if you think it does, then you had best get it out in the open, hunt it down and kill it.
Flannery O’Connor is one of my very favorite writers and John Huston did a magnificent job of capturing the Southern Gothic milieu and the black humor of her novel.
The time period is sort of unclear. The location is a smallish city in the Deep South of America. Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) has just returned from army service dressed in his military uniform and looking spiffy. He goes home to find a burned out empty shack. But Hazel has a mission he can only carry out in the city: to do things he has never done before. He switches into civilian gear and picks out a black hat which makes him look like a preacher to every one he meets. Hazel had a hellfire and brimstone preacher grandfather (John Huston, in flashback) and his main character trait is he does not believe in anything.
The first thing he does is hook up with a prostitute whose name he found on a bathroom wall. He then proceeds to preach the gospel of the Church of Christ without Christ on the streets. He is successful enough at this that later he attracts a copycat (Ned Beatty).
He meets up with kind of an idiot young man named Enoch Emory (Dan Shore) who refuses to stop following him around. He also meets blind preacher Asa Hawks (a great performance by Harry Dean Stanton) and his randy daughter Sabbath Lily (Amy Wright). He is fascinated by the preacher and eventually moves into the boarding house where the two live.
Flannery O’Connor’s universe is populated by antiheros and heroines who are running from God in one way or another. But God always has his way with these in the end. Whether the experience is positive or negative varies. Hazel is one that is profoundly changed when he is finally hunted down.
I love this movie. All the acting is great and the tone and meaning of the novel are captured perfectly. Highly recommended.
