Movie Review: Black Snake Moan

Decidedly campy, yet filled with dark comedy, witty southern lingo, soulful blues, and the wickedly sumptuous Christina Ricci, Black Snake Moan is an indefinable blend of pulpy guilty pleasures. With an amalgamated storyline unlike anything you've ever seen the film somehow manages to draw you in and chain you to its bizarrely likeable characters and feel-good scenarios, despite the fact that its target audience is relatively undecipherable.

Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) is a law-abiding, god-fearing farmer in Memphis, Tennessee, until his wife suddenly leaves him for his brother. Wrought with rage and sorrow, he turns to the bottle and his steady work on the farm. Rae (Christina Ricci) is a nymphomaniac who turns to anyone willing to have her (and the list is lengthy) when her anxiety-ridden boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake) ships off to boot camp. Abused and tormented by her uncontrollable desires, she ends up beaten, bloodied and abandoned on the road outside Lazarus' home. Righteously determined to nurse her back to health and cure her of her derangement, Lazarus (with good intentions, mind you) chains her to the heater inside his house.

The peculiar storyline combines offbeat and humorous situations with the severity of sexual disorders and rape. Oddly riveting, there is no way to predict what will happen next other than to intently wait for events to unfold. While simultaneously condemning and approving living your own life, Black Snake Moan provides a subtle commentary on the necessity of finding redemption and quelling self-destructive desires through an alternative source of pleasure. Salvation through music plays an important role here as does finding peace with oneself and discovering the courage to forgive. Such an intricate mix of themes placed against an even more complex setting urges the viewer to find its morals and dares them to relate to the exceedingly afflicted protagonists. Rarely has a film managed to express and evoke such a diverse range of emotions, from encroaching dread and unrequited love, to feverish lust and tearful sympathy.