Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus
Take a captivating and compelling road trip through the creative spirit of the American South, a world of churches, prisons, coalmines, truckstops, juke joints, swamps and mountains. Along the way Alt-Country musician Jim White meets other musicians including the Handsome Family, Johnny Dowd, 16 Horsepower, and David Johansen, old time banjo player Lee Sexton, and novelist Harry Crews. This film is a collage of stories and testimonies filled with sudden death, sin and redemption... and all the while, a strange Southern Jesus looms in the background.
Member Reviews
Endlessly fascinating - rnhaas
I don't see how this film is cliched and I also don't find Jim White pretentious, just interesting. Having driven around the South myself (though obviously not to the extent of the filmmakers) I found a lot of these images familiar. But its the music, the people (particularly Harry Crewe) and the editing that create a fascinating, elliptical and no doubt unfair portrait. I could watch it over and over I think and get something from it each time. Fascinating.Simplistic and Cliched - superamazonbabe
This film presents an over-simplified and clichéd characterization of the South, and Jim White comes off as a pretentious boob.
The documentary posits an over-arching saints-and-sinners type dichotomy that doesn’t provide a sensitive and objective examination of the “Southerners” we see in the movie. (Also, other reviewers have noted that this blanket term “the South” is too broad and allows for misleading generalizations which are evidenced in this film.) We see Pentecostals speaking in tongues and preaching about the impending rapture; we see guys in prison talking about the boredom and malaise that led them to a life of crime; we see people dancing and drinking at a roadside dive on a Saturday night. Obviously the scope of any documentary is selective, but the whole thing felt a bit too heavy-handed to me – we are only shown extremes of this society, with no gray area.
The film also attempts to glamorize the musicians whose inspiration comes from – what, exactly? Beyond Jim White’s constant vague philosophical ramblings, and the odd musician / artist anecdote, we don’t get much of a sense of where this music comes from, beyond a romanticized subjective notion of what “the South” should be. Here’s one of White’s gems: “I will never be a Southerner. I will be this imitation of a Southerner. But in a way, I feel like that brings me closer to God, because I've chosen--it's almost like a form of divinity. I've chosen my divinity rather than my divinity choosing me.”
Jim White leads us on a journey through Louisiana, Mississippi and Kentucky (the stunning cinematography is one of the few things this film has going for it), trucking a statue of Jesus in the trunk of his beat-up car (wow, what subtle symbolism) but I feel like the world we are viewing is totally and manipulatively manufactured by the film-makers.
I really hope that next time I pop in one of my Jim White CDs, I don’t get annoyed thinking about this documentary.
Member Reviews
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Endlessly fascinating - rnhaas
I don't see how this film is cliched and I also don't find Jim White pretentious, just interesting. Having driven around the South myself (though obviously not to the extent of the filmmakers) I found a lot of these images familiar. But its the music, the ...Simplistic and Cliched - superamazonbabe
This film presents an over-simplified and clichéd characterization of the South, and Jim White comes off as a pretentious boob.
The documentary posits an over-arching saints-and-sinners type dichotomy that doesn’t provide a sensitive and objective examination ...