JESUS' SON is a tale like so many others that we've witnessed in the world of film: young, purposeless man wanders about, falling in with similar people, a love affair destined for tragedy, and etc. It sports an unremarkable look that would otherwise be remarkable had music videos and commercials already trumped it: overexposure and vivid colorization.
But from its opening scene, JESUS' SON establishes itself as something quite worth watching. Despite the use of main-character-as-narrator, which can be a real sticking point, the film's writing and Billy Crudup's tremendous acting ability propel every scene into something charming and full, almost overflowing with ideas. In the course of this movie's average length, FH (in case you haven't seen the film, F and H are the initials of Crudup's character's unpleasant sobriquet) runs in with a bizarre and completely original group of characters who are all like him in some way: his manic junkie girlfriend (Morton), a down-and-out scumbag with a hammer (Leary), a perennial widow (Hunter), a Mennonite couple, a drug-addled orderly (Black), a crusty old con (Hopper). However, these characters are not token or caricatured, but fully formed people who live in FH's bizarre reality and all connect with his desperate longing for escape or meaning in one way or another.
Much like Bruno Dumont's recent films LA VIE DE JESUS (hmm) and HUMANITE, JESUS' SON explores life in a particularly unforgiving world (in this case, 1970's Chicago, in Dumont's, bleak pastoral France) and claws for some sort of beauty therein. Unlike Dumont's films, FH seems to find that beauty amongst people whom he can relate with and help. The two sides to this film can be seen in a span where FH works as an orderly, and, with the frantically comic Jack Black, steals pills to make it through the long graveyard shift. After a grisly scene involving the removal of a hunting knife from a man's eye, the two wander into the countryside, and, drug-addled and playing off one another (like the characters in Thompson's FEAR AND LOATHING. . .), marvel at the ghostly wonders of the night. These scenes are priceless examples of writing and imagination that, in terms of sheer delight, probably eclipse anything to come out of recent Hollywood.
In the end, the true glory of this film is to find compassion where our conceptions of characters would tell us otherwise. The characters are not spat upon in their depiction; everything they do is earnest and according to their human value. The viewer constantly waits for something truly horrible to occur (and this is, often, what the film portends), but instead we can find only light.
The movie has weak points, but they are few. All in all, this is a triumph of acting and writing, and the direction sparkles at times. The film fails to provide a coherent theme to speak of, but its disjointed pieces somehow fit together to form a wondrous whole that is never short on surprises or pure humanity.
But from its opening scene, JESUS' SON establishes itself as something quite worth watching. Despite the use of main-character-as-narrator, which can be a real sticking point, the film's writing and Billy Crudup's tremendous acting ability propel every scene into something charming and full, almost overflowing with ideas. In the course of this movie's average length, FH (in case you haven't seen the film, F and H are the initials of Crudup's character's unpleasant sobriquet) runs in with a bizarre and completely original group of characters who are all like him in some way: his manic junkie girlfriend (Morton), a down-and-out scumbag with a hammer (Leary), a perennial widow (Hunter), a Mennonite couple, a drug-addled orderly (Black), a crusty old con (Hopper). However, these characters are not token or caricatured, but fully formed people who live in FH's bizarre reality and all connect with his desperate longing for escape or meaning in one way or another.
Much like Bruno Dumont's recent films LA VIE DE JESUS (hmm) and HUMANITE, JESUS' SON explores life in a particularly unforgiving world (in this case, 1970's Chicago, in Dumont's, bleak pastoral France) and claws for some sort of beauty therein. Unlike Dumont's films, FH seems to find that beauty amongst people whom he can relate with and help. The two sides to this film can be seen in a span where FH works as an orderly, and, with the frantically comic Jack Black, steals pills to make it through the long graveyard shift. After a grisly scene involving the removal of a hunting knife from a man's eye, the two wander into the countryside, and, drug-addled and playing off one another (like the characters in Thompson's FEAR AND LOATHING. . .), marvel at the ghostly wonders of the night. These scenes are priceless examples of writing and imagination that, in terms of sheer delight, probably eclipse anything to come out of recent Hollywood.
In the end, the true glory of this film is to find compassion where our conceptions of characters would tell us otherwise. The characters are not spat upon in their depiction; everything they do is earnest and according to their human value. The viewer constantly waits for something truly horrible to occur (and this is, often, what the film portends), but instead we can find only light.
The movie has weak points, but they are few. All in all, this is a triumph of acting and writing, and the direction sparkles at times. The film fails to provide a coherent theme to speak of, but its disjointed pieces somehow fit together to form a wondrous whole that is never short on surprises or pure humanity.
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