"All human nature vigorously
resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful" - Flannery
O' Connor
Preaching the Church
Without Christ, Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif) tells anyone that will listen
that he wants a church that is free from salvation and dogma, a church
"where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays
that way." With existentialist overtones, he says, “Where you came from
is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where
you are is no good unless you can get away from it”. In John Huston's darkly
satiric film Wise Blood, adapted from Flannery O' Connor's first
novel, Haze is caught in a struggle between the obsessions of his past
and his desire to live the truth.
The more he resists his
rigid Christian upbringing represented by his fundamentalist grandfather,
the closer he is drawn to it. No matter what he does, Jesus moves "from
tree to tree in the back of his mind, the wild ragged figure motioning
him to turn around and come off into the dark." Raised in a predominately
Protestant area, Flannery O' Connor was a devout Catholic whose novels
and short stories paint a tragi-comic portrait of Bible Belt evangelism
and the hypocrisy that thrives in decaying Southern towns. While the film
is a human rather than a Christian interpretation and the ending is simply
tragic without being spiritually revealing, it still remarkably captures
the essence of the novel and, if nothing else, will send viewers scurrying
to their nearest library.
Set sometime in the mid-twentieth
century, Haze has returned from the war with a big chip on his shoulder.
Without joy he returns to his family home in Eastrod, Tennessee but on
finding it run down and deserted takes a train to the fictional Taulkinham.
Here he is seen by everyone that he meets to be a preacher even though
he strongly protests. Even the taxi driver tells him that his hat and "a
look in your face somewheres" make him look like a preacher. Brad Dourif's
appearance suggests Haze with a "nose like the shrike’s bill, eyes the
color of pecan shells and set so deep they are like passages leading nowhere."
When he meets a blind street preacher Asa Hawks (Harry Dean Stanton) and
his fifteen-year old daughter, Sabbath Lily (Amy Wright), childhood memories
are reactivated and he proudly tells them that he doesn't believe in anything.
With a zeal that might
be described as the passion of the anti-Christ, Haze buys a broken down
"rat-coloured" car that becomes the rock upon which he builds his new church,
the Church Without Christ. Wearing a preacher's bright blue suit and black
hat, Haze stands on the hood of his car and addresses a handful of stragglers,
spewing his contempt for Christianity. "Listen you people", he says, "I'm
going to preach there was no fall because there was nothing to fall from
and no redemption because there was no fall and no judgment because there
wasn't the first two. Nothing matters but that Jesus was a liar."
When anyone criticizes his car, Hazel defends himself with the statement,
"Nobody with a good car needs to be justified." Haze attracts an assortment
of mostly unlikable characters: con-artists, frauds, and women without
moral discernment.
While some are repugnant,
others are simply amusing and the film remains watchable because of its
savage humour and colourful language. For example, when one character describes
the Welfare woman who cared for him, "She sho was ugly. She had theseyer
brown glasses and her hair was so thin it looked like ham gravy trickling
over her skull", and, "a red-haired waitress at Walgreen's has "green eyes
set in pink" so that she looks like a picture of a Lime Cherry Surprise."
One of the most compelling characters, Enoch Emery (Dan Shor), a slow-witted
eighteen-year old with "wise blood" like his daddy, provides the comic
relief. Enoch is so desperate for friendship that, mimicking the travelling
Gonga the Gorilla show, he steals the gorilla costume and sneaks up on
people hoping they will shake his hand. In another sequence, thinking it
may be the "new Jesus", Enoch steals a shrunken mummy from the museum and
gives it to Haze.
When Haze becomes fed
up with the town and its inhabitants, he tries to leave but is stopped
by a sheriff who tells him he isn't going anywhere and proceeds to push
his car into a lake in a parody of the baptism ritual. His behavior becomes
more and more extreme, having decided that he cannot live in both worlds,
he chooses to live according to his convictions. Lacking the ability to
express love, he internalizes the car's destruction and now sees himself
as "not clean". He stuffs his shoes with glass and rocks and wraps barbed
wire across his chest, then throws lime on his face. Suggesting a parallel
with the story of Paul on the road to Damascus, he loses his sight but
regains his vision. As strongly as he has denied Christ's presence, however,
he now cannot resist it. In spite of himself, Haze achieves the grace that
he sought to avoid.
Howard
Schumann