What other testament to how criminally neglected this film is other than the fact it has a rough 900 votes at the time of writing this? A movie directed by John Huston of all people. That's not to say Wise Blood is not a flawed film, few if any such films exist after all, nor that it has that dramatic wholesomeness and clear characterization that makes something like Sierra Madre the classic it is, yet, much like other 80's cult items like Repo Man, it remains endlessly watchable and fascinating.
The movie follows the trials and tribulations of a young man fresh back from a war (not specified which - any war will do really) somewhere in the deep South who starts out as an angry man who believes in no saviours and no dogmas and dreams of a Church of Christ without Christ but slowly finds himself digressing out of circumstances out of his hand to that which he most loathes. It's not specified to what extent the war changed him as a man or if it did at all, or if a fundamendalist grandfather (played in a flashback cameo by John Huston himself) played a role in his formative years.
Turning from fierce individualist and hater of preachers to zealous preacher of his own church where there is neither fall, redemption or judgement because there's nothing to fall from and nothing to be redeemed for, and from preacher to self-tormenting repentant, Brad Dourif brings Hazel Motes and his monomaniac pursuit alive with burning passion. Always tense and ready to lash out at everyone and anyone, he's a seething mass of tendons and nerves writhing with agitation.
I have not read Flannery O'Connor's original novel nor have I been brought up in a Protestant or Catholic background (or the deep South for that matter), but there's something captivating about Wise Blood beyond and despite its particular subject matter. That elusive quality that turns a good movie into a haunting one. Still, it's easy to see why it failed to find an audience when it came out and has been largely forgotten since. The seriocomic mood is perhaps a bit too incosistent for the viewer who needs to quickly determine what kind of response the movie demands. Part religious drama, part road movie, part demented black comedy, part satiric oddity, Wise Blood is as hard to file under a specific label as it is to watch without a reaction. Yet it doesn't fail in any of them, and that's why it's such a bonafide cult film, rather than merely a curiosity.
Blessed with a powerhouse performance by Dourif, enhanced by cameos of such character actor stalwarts as Harry Dean Stanton (in the role of blind preacher) and Ned Beatty, the picturesque baroque of the American South, and assured direction by the venerable John Huston, Wise Blood, in all its southern gothic glory, is a cult film crying out to be rediscovered by a new audience.
