52 Pick-Up # 27 – Wise Blood (1979)

Okay, I think that's the last of the fireworks. Time to get back to work.

Welcome back to 52 Pick-Up. It feels weird to still be explaining this at halfway into the year, but as a courtesy for any late arrivals, this is my year long project as an incentive to keep writing something weekly and going through some films that have not seen before.

Last time here, luck of the draw meant I spent the week of 4th of July with a Canadian folk horror movie that explored some of the complicated issues regarding colonialism and pacifism. For anyone who was wondering why I didn't go with something American, I hear you – and I've got just the thing this week, though whether you'll like it or not may vary.

This is one where I will start by saying, I had a misconception of this movie going in. Further, that misconception was what intrigued me to watch it. Having now seen it, I'm actually not upset that I was wrong – the outcome I got here still made for an intriguing watch. If anything, it might have gone darker than what I was expecting.

Which makes one of the more roundabout ways I've introduced a movie for this project, but I'll explain further just how I misread John Huston's Wise Blood shortly.

This actually will dovetail nicely with what has become the de facto 'pitch' part of these writeups. For the longest time, my main association of this movie was that it had a young Brad Dourif in a dark comedy playing what was, for all purposes, a preacher. Initially I took this to mean he was an overt grifter, separating the religious from their money in a full pantomime of that old time religion.

I had the right character type, but the wrong actor, and how Dourif ties into that is much more interesting.

Adapted from the Flannery O'Connor novel of the same name, Dourif plays veteran Hazel Motes returning to his home town after his service is concluded. After coming back to find his home abandoned and dilapidated, he sets off to find a new path for himself. This leads him into several adventures, including a friendly, if naive zookeeper (Dan Shor), a gladhanding promoter (Ned Beatty) and sidewalk preacher Asa Hawks (Harry Dean Stanton) and his daughter Lily (Amy Wright.) At first, Hazel's stance towards the Hawks is only lightly antagonistic, not having any patience for Asa's act. This changes after he moves in with them and becomes more keenly aware of just how much of Asa's persona is fabricated. Disgusted and disillusioned, Hazel begins trying to push his own belief movement – the Church of Truth Without Christ. 

As presented, the idea is not designed to antagonize, but merely out of Hazel's sincere feelings after his time in the war and from seeing the theater of religion up close – both from Asa and, in flashbacks, from his grandfather (voiced by director Huston.) Of course, Hazel's sincerity soon meets its match as people around him start trying to play his movement just like any other, be it in Shor's Enoch trying to find Hazel a new messiah figure despite the stated ethos otherwise or Beatty's Hoover trying to turn the whole thing into a moneymaking endeavor. 

As much as this is longer than some of my previous 'pitch' summaries, this still only touches about half the plot and only a handful of the individuals Hazel crosses paths with in his journeys. Which is pretty impressive because the movie never really feels overstuffed or drawn out. It moves at a good clip and each of the encounters stacks on the increasingly taxed Hazel, which is a great showing for Dourif and a good opportunity to remind that this was a man whose first break into cinema got him an Oscar nomination. While he found a welcome (and quite entertaining) place in genre work, this was a guy who came out of the gate swinging as a dramatic actor at first.

I bring that up both as a general beat of praise for him as well as the fact that his performance is a big part of why this movie works for me, especially given this movie is ultimately a dark comedy. I know it's a regular spot for me, but I can find myself picturing a lesser version of this movie – one where Hazel is a broader character, angrier, or so tightly wound that we get a breakdown on the level of the infamous Frank Grimes from The Simpsons. If I'm being fair, there's probably even directors and/or actors who could make that balance work and work well. Even having said that, I like the way Huston and Dourif take this. Dourif's Hazel is a buttoned up, guarded individual from the jump (as the movie demonstrates early on with how little information he chooses to divulge from his time in the war, actively keeping it to the barest of bare minimums). As he meets people, he tries to remain distant and aloof as a baseline, only really starting to act otherwise when people get too close or are simply too much for him. Even his moments of anger come with a degree of restraint (and, let's be fair, this is Brad Dourif here – if they wanted this movie to have big anger moments, he could deliver those and leave a smoking crater in the aftermath.)

That restraint is the part of this performance that really makes this whole thing work for me, specifically regarding Hazel's church movement. The way Dourif plays Hazel, his movement reads as one born not of cynicism, but of sincerity. This is a man who genuinely believes that shedding a lot of the more explicitly supernatural trappings of religion could help improve people's lives. As much as the movie lines it up that this could have been him expressly trying to get revenge on Asa, he's speaking of his views with an interest in reaching people, and becoming ever more disillusioned and disgusted as people either miss the point or actively try to game it in defiance of what he's trying to achieve.

The result makes for a more subdued comedy, but also a much blacker one, as Hazel watches his well intended idea get wrestled from him and realizes there is no one he can really count on.

At this point, I have to take a moment to admit something: I haven't read any Flannery O'Connor to this point. I'm not sure how much of this is baked into O'Connor's work and how much was worked in by Huston. Having said that, if this is what O'Connor's style tends towards, this has me wanting to seek out her work. There is something very engaging about something that is, in many ways, very dark and nihilistic but also doesn't feel oppressive about it that helps make the comedy of this work.

So, to circle back to the start – this wasn't the movie I expected going in, but I still quite enjoyed what I got just the same.

And with that, July rolls on.

For those who have been enjoying the times shuffle results in wild tone shifts, oh, have I got a treat for you. Where are we going after John Huston's dark comedy about belief and human nature? Somewhere a little faster.

Or at lot faster.

A LOT a lot faster.

See you next week for Takeshi Koike's balls-to-the-wall sci-fi racing passion project Redline.

Till then.