CS Weekly Archive > DVD > 06/29/07

Weak Characters Make for Strong Drama

By scott castle

Craig Brewer conjures a blues fable with colorful characters and melodramatic scenarios as two strangers grapple with their demons in Black Snake Moan.

Black Snake Moan

Craig Brewer (also directed)

Plagued by nymphomaniac urges in the absence of her Marine Corps-bound boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake), Rae (Christina Ricci) finds herself beaten and abandoned on a country road after a disastrous liaison. She's found by bluesman-cum-farmer Lazarus Woods (Samuel L. Jackson), who's still suffering from the sting of his estranged wife's (Adriane Lenox) ongoing affair with his brother (Jackson's real-life assistant, Leonard L. Thomas). Convinced God wants him to set Rae's sinful ways right, Lazarus chains her to his radiator in the hopes of healing her wounds and thereby salving his own. Black Snake Moan makes dramatic strengths of its characters' weaknesses and weaves a hypnotic tale of blues-infused redemption in the hot, sticky South.

Plagued by panic attacks during the making of his previous film, Hustle & Flow, filmmaker Craig Brewer borrowed a bit of himself to imbue his characters with the demons that would haunt them in his Southern-marinated take on George Eliot's Silas Marner. Though the trappings of the story are operatic—a young, white girl chained up in the farmhouse of an old, black man —the stylized nature of the tale belies the rich vein of human suffering tapped by Brewer's script. Like the tortured characters of a Faulkner novel, Black Snake is populated by wounded folk seeking salvation by quelling the suffering of others. Rae and Ronnie can only deal with their problems when they're together acting as mutual safety blankets, while Lazarus tries to treat his melancholy with isolation. In trying to tame the tramp in Rae, Lazarus opens himself to a world of experiences that begin the healing process for him while making his charge accept responsibility for her own well being. As bluesman Son House explains at the top of the film, "Ain't but one kind of blues. And that consisted between male and female that's in love…two people supposed to be in love when one or the other deceives the other through their love." Where Brewer is concerned, that's true, but one hasn't necessarily deceived the other in the case of Lazarus and Rae.

- Commentary with writer-director Craig Brewer
- "Conflicted: The Making of Black Snake Moan"
- "Rooted in the Blues" music featurette
- "The Black Snake Moan"
- Deleted scenes

In his insightful and honest commentary, Brewer delves into how his own panic attacks, comforted only by his wife's presence, led to the creation of Ronnie and Ray. The construction of the story and the music that influenced it are also discussed at length in the same commentary and in a selection of short features, while the deleted scenes, with comments from Brewer, illustrate how sometimes something that works on the page becomes unnecessary onscreen.

Black Snake Moan isn't a complicated tale, but it's a well-told story populated with rich and damaged characters who writhe to the blues and cling to each other in the hope that Brewer's script will afford them a better ending than the musical genre that inspired their plight usually offers.

Black Snake Moan
Paramount Home Entertainment
Rated R; 115 min.
$29.99

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Scott Castle is one thesis shy of a master's degree in film. He's written two short films, four television scripts, and a handful of short stories. He lives in Los Angeles.

Black Snake Moan courtesy Paramount Home Entertainment

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