Wise Blood (1980)

It is a performances centric movie

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

After 35 years of just reading about this movie, I finally saw this John Huston adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's novel on DVD from my local library. It's a pretty strange and funny story of Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) wandering aimlessly through a Georgia town intent on becoming a preacher who doesn't believe in Christ and hoping to attract an audience who feels the same. Dourif is fine in the lead role but I really liked it when Amy Wright appeared as a young girl who's attracted to him. She's both funny and sexy in her interpretation of her character. I also liked Ned Beatty playing someone who recognizes the potential in Hazel but Motes doesn't seem to feel the same way. May not be for all tastes but Wise Blood is very much worth a look.

If this film is the masterful adaptation of one of Flannery O'Connor's works that one user review claims it is, then life is really too short to spend any of my time delving into Ms O'Connor's writings. In a nutshell Wise Blood seems to be repetitively making the obvious point that emotionally needy, as well as weak minded, people can be counted on to either be duped by preachers and other con artists, or even to simply just con themselves. Personally, I'm just disappointed that the nonsense of religion in general, and the Christian version of it, in particular as sold in the U.S., still is able to infect the minds of many who are otherwise fairly intelligent people. The Age of Reason, written by the great Thomas Paine in the 1790s, should have permanently exposed the so called holy bible as the sick, sadistic, and ignorant book that it is.And a 1 hr and 46 min movie was not needed to underline the basic truth that P T Barnum was right, there is a sucker born every minute. Can never forget that, due to the multitudes that gather in churches each week.

Directed by John Huston, "Wise Blood" is an adaptation of a 1952 Flannery O'Connor novel of the same name. It stars Brad Dourif as Hazel Motes, the grandson of a staunch Christian. When he returns to the American South after World War 2, Hazel decides to start a church of his own.Huston's film largely omits what made O'Connor's novel memorable. O'Connor, who wrestled with her own Catholicism, set her tale in a racist, puritanical, post-war America. Moulded by religious family members, her characters saw themselves as being "unclean" and "guilty of sin". The faintest desires, the slightest sexual acts, sent O'Connor's characters into a tailspin, each viewing themselves as having committed a transgression against God.But O'Connor's novel went beyond simple Catholic Guilt. Culturally indoctrinated to view African Americans as being "unclean", O'Connor's guilt-ridden characters begin to view themselves as being "black". Self-identifying with African Americans, they perceive themselves as being tarred, blighted, outcasts and so intrinsically unworthy. O'Connor then drew parallels between slavery and Christianity; both were methods of inculcating obedience. Both promised redemption only after impossible, and obscene, forms of discipline.John Huston's "Wise Blood" touches upon these themes. Huston's characters try to reject God, they put stones in their shoes as penance and wear gorilla costumes as a form of quasi-racist punishment. More shockingly, they gouge out their eyeballs and lacerate their own bodies. But as Huston's film is obviously set in the racially integrated 1970s, and as it makes no attempts to convey the mood, mannerisms and psycho-social realities of the 1940s, these themes feel half-baked. In subtle ways, the Bible Belt of 1979 was not the Bible Belt of 1948. Huston either doesn't care about these subtleties, or honestly expects us to believe that his film is set in the 1940s.7.9/10 – Flawed but fascinating. See "Elmer Gantry".

The premise is fairly straightforward. Owing to bitterness and anger directed at his preacher father, a young Georgia man named Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) sets out to start his own church, "the church of truth without Christ", founded on a belief system that deliberately contradicts the fundamentalist, orthodox beliefs of his Southern heritage.The essence of this film is Hazel Motes. Everything else orbits this central character. And what a character! Maybe his motives are pure; maybe he means well. But his perspective is blatantly and wildly distorted, even grotesque. His fanatical obsession toward his rebel cause blinds him to reality and the goodness around him. He insults those he comes in contact with. His hateful self-righteousness leads to opinionated, combative personal relations. Dourif's acting amplifies Motes' repugnant personality. I found both the character and the actor very hard to take.By contrast, Motes' ambient Southern environment seems much more real and inviting. I can easily connect with the Southerners in this film, and the non-professional actors and extras that appear. Further, the prod design mirrors quite well the poverty and general bleakness of the South in the era the film was made. That culture is rich in atmosphere and history. Yet there's an undeniable melancholy and depression that washes over the entire region. And the film does a good job of expressing that mood."Wise Blood" is a product of the turbulent era of the late 60s and early 70s, a period of intense suspicion toward all institutions, including organized religion. The director, John Huston, did not like religion. Given these antecedents, the film is bound to come across as slightly heretical to some viewers.I react to this art-house film with ambivalence. I dislike intensely the character of Hazel Motes. And I think Dourif overplays the role. Yet I appreciate the script's underlying premise with the accompanying conflicts, contradictions, and humor that a well-developed story can lead to. And I like the Southern setting, authentic and down-home.An adequate interpretation of this film requires the viewer's full attention. "Wise Blood" is most assuredly a black comedy. Yet it is not a film to take lightly.