Wise BloodWise Blood
In this acclaimed adaptation of the first novel by legendary Southern writer Flannery O’Connor, John Huston brings to life a world of vivid, poetic American eccentricity. Brad Dourif, in an impassioned performance, is Hazel Motes, who, fresh out of the army, attempts to open the first Church Without Christ in the small town of Taulkinham. Populated with inspired performances that seem to spring right from O’Connor’s pages, Huston’s Wise Blood is an incisive portrait of spirituality and e
Rating:  List Price: $ 39.95 Price: $ 24.55 American History X (Ws Ac3)
Edward Norton’s Academy Award nominated role as a White Supremist who sees the error of his ways while jailed for murder. Unfortunately, he leaves prison to find his brother (Edward Furlong) heading down the same path.DVD Features:
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(out of 16 reviews)
(out of 669 reviews)
Review by Randy Buck for Wise Blood
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Finally! John Huston’s wonderful, spare adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s darkly brilliant comic novel comes to DVD. I’ve loved this film since its original release — saw it repeatedly in Paris during its first run there, where it was more successful critically than APOCALYPSE NOW or TESS — and have tried to catch it at every (infrequent) opportunity since. The period details are a bit off (a low budget guaranteed a bare-bones physical production), but the screenplay and direction couldn’t be better. And that cast! A career performance from Brad Dourif as the religion-crazed Hazel Motes, marvellous supporting work from Harry Dean Stanton, Dan Shor and Amy Wright, the ideal Sabbath Lily — and Atlanta actress Mary Nell Santacroce (mother of Dana Ivey) is unforgettable as Hazel’s landlady. O’Connor’s violent, sin-soaked South is certainly not for all tastes, nor, in its fidelity to her work, is this film. But if you respond to her vision, this picture will haunt you the rest of your life. Hats off to Criterion for giving us another in their line of wonderful restorations.
Review by Robin Simmons for Wise Blood
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“WISE BLOOD” is an overlooked jewel.
Southern writer Flannery O’Connor’s first novel, “Wise Blood,” made it to the big screen in 1979. The John Huston directed, low budget feature was widely praised and then practically forgotten.
O’Connor was a devout Catholic. She was also battling lupus, the sometimes debilitating immune disorder. Both factors may have colored her novel. Huston was a devout atheist. His world view certainly nuanced the tone of the film.
The story concerns a somewhat troubled, perhaps damaged, youth, Hazel Motes (Brad Dourif). Just out of the army and son of a fire and brimstone Pentecostal preacher, Motes is determined to open the first Church Withouth Christ in Taulkinham, Tennessee.
A young Brad Dourif is brilliant as the driven, vexed, Motes. There’s not a false note or a wasted frame. His is a journey of spiritual self-exploration, penance and perhaps redemption. O’Connor’s curiosity about the southern brand of Pentecostal mind set is riveting on film. Motes is trying to shed the damage of his ferocious religious childhood, but cannot shed his spirituality. He finds he’s a Christian in spite of himself.
Supporting actors Harry Dean Stanton, Amy Wright, Ned Beatty, William Hickey and Dan Shor are all spot on.
The frisson between director Huston’s disdain for religion and O’Connor’s devoutness is a perfect match. The screenplay by brothers Benedict and Michael Fitzgerald does not stray from the core events, tone and ideas of O’Connor’s story.
The obviously lower budget production, shot mostly in Macon, Georgia of the late 1970s, does not really detract, even though the novel is set in a somewhat earlier period.
The use of older, rather decayed buildings and locations amidst a more modern setting give a kind of muddy, out-of-time, appeal. A nice visual metaphor to the theme of old fundamentalist religious views in conflict with a more progressive spirituality.
This is a unique film and story. Hard to categorize. For me, it’s a darkly comic, decidedly gothic, tale of profound spirituality and humanism. When the shoot was over, Huston said, “I think I’ve been had.”
Criterion’s transfer, as usual, is clean and sharp. I thought the color was unusually true and subtle. And the period monaural track crisp and easy on the ear.
The extras are all watchable. The new interviews with Dourif and the writer-producer brothers Fitzgerald are entertaining and informative.
A huge bonus is the rare recording of Flannery O’Connor reading her famous and terrific short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is alone probably worth the price of the disc! This is the only known recording of the author reading one of her stories.
There’s also a wonderful vintage 1982 “Creativity With Bill Moyers” with director Huston.
Review by Doug Anderson for Wise Blood
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John Huston sets this adaptation of Flannery O’Connors Wise Blood not in the sin-soaked South of the early-twentieth century but in the present. This may have been due to budgetary constraints but Huston makes virtue of necessity and the result is a film that looks like it grew right out of the decaying streets of Anytown, America circa the late-1970′s. The result is offsetting at first, because in this translation the story is less about religion and more about an America that has lost its unifying vision (if indeed it ever had one). Therefore, thematically, Huston’s Wise Blood squares nicely with many other American films from the 69-81 Vietnam and post-Vietnam era like Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy, Bogdanavich’s The Last Picture Show, Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop, Altman’s Nashville, Malick’s Days of Heaven, and Forman’s Ragtime.
As the beginning credits roll we are treated to a series of beautiful black and white photographs which serve as evocations of an older America but one that in some ways still exists and lives on in the old run-down parts of town and in the old run-down neighborhoods even as a new America tries to re-invent itself and erase its ties to its sin-soaked past. Wise Blood is about American history and identity in a time of national crisis, but Huston does not emphasize the Vietnam War as the source of this crisis, rather he underplays it and instead chooses to focus simply on a lack of a substantive vision (religious, artistic, or otherwise) to lend coherence to the chaos that is America not just in the seventies but in all times and places.
To a certain extent this adaptation does feel like a loyal adaptation in so far as the characters are all lonely outcasts prey to visions and dreams that promise salvation but only bring about further destruction, and so they are all, despite their efforts, always on the verge of mental and spiritual collapse. This is certainly a vision of life that is everywhere present in William Faulkner and Nathaniel West and Tennessee Williams and Flannery O’Connor and Truman Capote and in countless other Southern writer’s fictions, but its also the vision of many a writer not from the South. Huston was a big fan of Irish literature and it is also the vision of Joyce whose “The Dead’ was adapted by Huston in 1987, and Beckett, as well as English writer Malcolm Lowry whose Under the Volcano was adapted by Huston in 1984. Huston is interested in the specifics of American history and identity but the film he creates addresses not just an American but a world-wide malaise.
Brad Dourif does a tremendous job as Hazel Motes. He plays Hazel as a tortured and lost soul desperately trying to free himself from America’s long history of evangelical chicanery (Vietnam being just one example of something America has done using religion as a rationale). Hazel believes not in Jesus which only clouds peoples thinking and fools them into believing things they would be better off not believing, but in science which allows for a clear view of both the past and the future. But Hazel just can’t get his preacher father or other preacher figures (one of which is played by Harry Dean Stanton and another by Ned Beatty) out of his mind or off of his conscious, as it were, for he’s got a mighty guilty conscious even though he knows America’s sins are not his own. He can’t stand the superstition of religion and the way men use it to manipulate other men and yet it seems like everyone is either desperate to preach or deperate to be preached to if only to assuage the sense of being alone and lost.
Hazel wants only to believe in material reality and tangible things like his old car which he thinks is all a man needs to live his life, but he just can’t altogether shake the pull of the religious life which has the power (or at least offers the promise) to lure and transport the soul and not just the material body. In the end Hazel Motes becomes not a preacher but an otherworldy saint who has rejected the world and all ties to it. Whether this is a personal failure or a triumph is up to the viewer to decide.
Review by J from NY for Wise Blood
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Brad Dourif gives a stellar and terrifying performance in this crazy jewel of an independent film based on Flannery O’ Connor’s novel “Wise Blood”.
While it might not match the majesty of the novel, what possibly could?
Hazel Motes is an angry SOB who is determined to prove to the world that Jesus Christ is a sham. More than that, he’s out to destroy anyone who claims that Christ is indeed the Way, the Truth and the Life; he has all the maniacal zeal of a debauched decadent damning himself into sainthood.
There are frequent flashbacks to Hazel’s childhood, sitting in backwoods barns and hearing about hellfire and damnation from a tall, ugly, and sinister Pentecostal preacher played by none other than director John Huston. This man was Mote’s Grandfather and he was so terrifying that in one scene young Hazel urinates all over the place.
He encounters all manner of evil and corruption as he bashes heads trying to become *the* only preacher in the South (not likely). Encountering frauds, tricksters, and money hungry snake oil salesmen, the worst is perhaps Ned Beatty and his companion Asa Hawks (Harry Dean Stanton). Not only do they plagiarize Hazel’s demented sermons, given on the tops of cars and random streetcorners, they dare to do so for money, which really pisses Hazel off. And Brad Dourif playing Hazel Motes–well, you wouldn’t want to piss either of them off.
In reality, behind his Protestant-atheist disguise, this man is a “Jesus Hog” as the daughter of the “Blind Preacher” calls him, and a penitent in the making. Even his treatment of his insane, monkey suit donning young friend is only another manifestation of Catholicism’s burning flame drawing him near like a demented moth. And he crashes on that flame, quite badly. This is recommended for anyone who still concernes themselves with O’ Connor’s work and that raggedy, shadowy beggar who lurks in the trees and everywhere else. Really sick and really pure.
Review by Joshua Miller for Wise Blood
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I’ve read that to understand Wise Blood one must read its source material, the novel by Flannery O’Connor. I didn’t read this until after watching the film and prior to doing so had never heard of O’Connor or her novel. While the novel may assist in one’s understanding of the film, I feel a second viewing of the film would serve a similar purpose…And I do plan on seeing the film again. While I may not have read the book and feel I do have more to understand about the film, Wise Blood is a film that came as a complete surprise to me. The film is directed by the legendary John Huston, whose filmography consists of several masterpieces…I’ve at least heard of many of them, but I hadn’t heard of this film until The Criterion Collection released it some time ago. I didn’t have high expectations for the film, but found the film only deepening my respect for Huston as a filmmaker.
Brad Dourif plays Hazel Motes, a wide-eyed man returning home from the Army. When he finds his family home abandoned, he buys some new clothes and sets off to do things that “ain’t ever been done before.” His new clothes make him look like a preacher and he finds himself frequently mistaken for one, but he’s quick to clarify he’s not a preacher…Hazel hates preachers in fact. Soon, Hazel meets Asa Hawks (Harry Dean Stanton) a supposedly blind, snake-like preacher and his nymphet daughter Sabbath Lily (Amy Wright). Hazel seems to be running from the idea of religion, but always crashing head-on into it. Finally, Hazel begins preaching the “truth without Christ.”
It’s a strange plot, yes…But it’s worth noting that the film, while centered on religion, doesn’t seem like a religious film. In fact, much of it plays like satire. Through his story, Hazel encounters all sorts of characters that could only exist in fiction, characters played by a perfect cast at the very top of their game. I don’t recall ever seeing Dourif in a better role; he plays Motes wide-eyed, nervous, and with pent-up rage and religious fervor always about to bubble over the surface. It’s certainly a career best for the man. Ned Beatty (in a small role) is delightfully sleazy, while Stanton is perfectly believable as the false preacher. Even Dan Shor impressed me with his performance as the child-like Enoch Emory.
Huston was not a director that needed to be visually extravagant to make a beautiful film. Wise Blood is a great film to look at, with a postcard simplicity that is quite charming. Even the score is made up of simple folk-y music. The screenplay is by Michael Fitzgerald and Benedict Fitzgerald (who co-wrote The Passion of the Christ, which may make you see this film differently) and what a wonderful screenplay it is. It shifts effortlessly from quirky and funny to serious and disturbing and characters that could easily seem like stereotypes seem very human. As I said earlier in my review; I look forward to watching the film again to fully grasp the multiple dimensions of it.
The Criterion Collection has done a beautiful job with the film’s transfer and I applaud them for releasing the film and (hopefully) giving it a wider audience. While I can’t quite figure out whether the film is supposed to be straight-forward or some sort of social satire (maybe Huston was confused as well), my first impression has left me thinking that Wise Blood is an overlooked American classic. I can only imagine that it would grow richer with repeated viewings.
GRADE: A-
Review by nico_laos for American History X (Ws Ac3)
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How terrifying is it while listening to some of Edward Norton’s rants in this movie….that you actually begin to understand his point of view on things? That’s a very important aspect of this film. The hatred spewing from his mouth along with statistical evidence and insightful rhetoric places the viewer amist what seems to be an actual white supremicist rally. It becomes easy to see how so many fall into crowds like this with characters like the fictional Derrick Vinyard preaching to the masses. Many people don’t like the way the world around them is. They’re looking for a change. People like Vinyard offer a path to that change.But this story is mainly about redemption. The redemption of the character in question, Derrick Vinyard. Only after he loses everything can he begin to see the horrible path that he has beaten for his younger brother who is speedily chasing after him. The unlikely friendship with a black prison inmate and the tutalage of his former principle are what helps him return to his humanity. The simple yet distanced solution to all the hatred and anger that he’s felt most of his life comes like an epiphany: “It’s just not worth it.” A point that he vehemently drives into those around him.Be forwarned, this is not a happy story. The ending is tragic yet depressingly real. Hatred becomes a vicious circle.
Review by FloozyFlapper1926 for American History X (Ws Ac3)
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This is one of the movies that touched me more than any others have in quite a long time. It puts a human face on skinheads, not glorifying them yet showing how a young person can be warped by a racist father and what racism can do to a family. Derek Vinyard had to learn the truth about racism the hard way by being betrayed in prison and he began to question his beliefs after a black man is the only person who befriends him. He begins to understand how futile and destructive hatred is only to pay for his mistakes in the end. At times this movies is difficult to watch but I think it is important for everyone to see. Ed Norton definitely deserved the oscar for this film and was cheated. Anyone who watches this will see how racism only destroys families, hurts others and destroys one’s self in the end. It is brutal yet honest and it is what good filmmaking is all about it. I would give it ten stars if I could. Simply brilliant.
Review by for American History X (Ws Ac3)
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Stunningly powerful movie which left me and my friends in a state of quiet and thoughtful contemplation even as the titles were concluding. A cautionary tale I guess set in Venice Beach,California about hate and prejudice.Two common human traits of which none of us are innocent.A talented cast led by those two Edwardians,Norton and Furlong of a story about a young neo nazi who is jailed for three years after the cold blooded killing of a black man attempting to steal his car.This flashback scene is not for the faint-hearted.He is unremorseful at first but eventually finds his epiphany within the stark reality of the prison walls.Enough said.Despite the controversial nature of the film it does cut to the core hard and fast.I especially liked the flashbacks in black&white.An often used device which works well here,as does the quote by Abraham Lincoln towards the end,”…we must not be enemies but friends…” Many critics have been scathing of the one dimensional supporting characters and they may be right in that respect,Nortons exceptional performance not withstanding but this still does not devalue it from being one of the most critical and memorable films to come out of hollywood for a long time.One of my top ten for this last decade of the millenium and well deserved.
Review by Jacqueline M. Lum for American History X (Ws Ac3)
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American History is chilling story about a skinhead Derek (Norton) who is sent to prison for killing two blank gang members. During his incarceration he is subjected to the brutal ways of prison society. In the prison laundry Derek meets a fellow black inmate who has no ill-feeling towards Derek’s racist beliefs and helps Derek change his attitudes towards other people. Overtime, Derek begins too see the damage racism has brought to himself and his family. Unfortunately Derek’s younger brother is heading towards the same path Derek took. Derek is determined too stop his brother and faces his former gang and mentor.American History should be shown to all high school kids because the movie has such a strong message. The part of the movie that struck me was Derek’s family. His family was emotionally and morally bankrupt by the past racism inflicted by Derek’s deceased father and Derek himself. Ed Norton’s portrayal as a young racist was chilling and convincing. You could feel his rage and hatred towards society and minorities in general. I thought Ed Norton deserved an Oscar, however the academy gets weak knees about issues such as racism. I would recommend this movie…
Review by Mr. N. Carnegie for American History X (Ws Ac3)
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Edward Norton gives an extraordinarily brilliant (and Oscar nominated) performance as Derek Vinyard, a neo-nazi skinhead in this explosive and powerful drama about two brothers caught up in a cycle of racial hatred and violence. Told through the eyes of Derek’s younger brother Danny, superbly portrayed by Edward Furlong, this is the story of a family torn apart after the loss of their firefighter father, killed whilst working in a black neighbourhood. As a result, the highly intelligent Derek (Norton), already influenced by his late father’s bigotry and manipulated by cowardly fascist Cameron Alexander (Stacy Keach) becomes the charismatic leader of a local gang of skinheads. This inevitably leads to friction within Derek’s family and his imprisonment for the murder of two black youths. Whilst in prison hero-worshipping Danny (Furlong) seeks to emulate his older brother and becomes more and more involved with the white power movement and influenced by Cameron (Keach) and his mindless morons. However, with a hero’s welcome being planned for Derek’s release from prison, he returns to his neighbourhood a changed man and sets out to repair the damage he’s done to his family and to persuade his brother not to travel the same road.Brilliantly written by David Mc.Kenna and with top-notch performances from both its male leads (ably supported by Avery Brooks and Stacy Keach) American History X is an intelligent and powerful examination of the causes and existence of racial bigotry and hatred. It does not seek to sensationalise rascism or violence but neither does it duck the issues. Controversial because of its frank portrayal of rascists as human beings, the scariest part of watching American History X is how credible and believable Edward Norton’s rascists arguments (as the charismatic leader Derek Vinyard) can be and how easy it must be for impressionable youth to be drawn into a world of hatred and violence. This is as much education as entertainment and essential viewing for fans of intelligent drama. Described by the critics as “magnificent”, “extraordinary” and “outstanding” American History X genuinely is a must see movie and a must own DVD.