The Church Of The Brethren Of All Non-Believers-The Film Adaptation Of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

 

DVD Review  

 

By Sam Lowell

Wise Blood, starring Brad Dourif, Dan Shor, Harry Dean Stanton, directed by John Huston, based on Flannery O’Connor’s novel of the same name, 1979 

Sure, religion, any religion but we will concentrate on evangelical here since that will come into play, will tie a man in knots, a woman too. Ask Hazel Motes, played by Brad Dourif, in the film adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, he’ll tell you true, he’ll give you the Word, the Word without the guff, without the big theology behind it. The fight against the word that got branded inside his head as a little child like a lot of us and it would not let him go, no question, would not let him go as a boy, or man. Got it branded in his head by a fiery old fundamentalist evangelical tent preacher of a grandfather and the experience never let him rest. Yeah, as the story line unfolds it just never let him rest and maybe that was one of the point Ms. O’Connor was trying to make in her book about the Hazels of the world. Maybe that struggle for redemption and salvation just was too embedded by that damn old tent fire and brimstone preacher. Some of us let it go, let it go a bit once we left home, got away from the hothouse effect religion played in our youths but some like Hazel went over the edge, went to war with a vengeance the religion of his youth.             

Here is how it played out in the film (which followed the themes of the book fairly closely as well as the story line which had been cobbled together from four shorter stories by Ms. O’Connor published in magazines when the book was first published in 1952). Who knows what will cause a person to test the ends of his or her faith, or how one winds up scratching and clawing trying to figure out how it got broken, got pushed into the depths of hell fire and damnation.  Our boy Hazel, Hazel Motes, out of some Podunk Southern town, do we really need to know its official name they were, are, legion, North and South, some small town, with small town eyes and small town mores, and if small enough one small town Christian faith, fundamental, Old Testament fundamental if the place had been “burned” over by one of the periodic “great awakenings” that have swept the country since its founding came back from war ready, willing and able to war on his old-time religion. Came back from war with a war-wounded heart and a government check for his troubles (given for some undisclosed wound suffered in real war).

(The war in the film was unmentioned but in the 1979 film it would follow that the war was Vietnam, a war to try men’s souls in and out of uniform, a war that created a whole generation of guys who had trouble coming back to the “real” world, some who wound up as “brothers under the bridge” out along the railroad track “jungles” and arroyos of Southern California and guys like Hazel to battle other inner demons. The war in the O’Connor book was World War II, a war that tried men’s souls in a different way and which would undermine the resolve of many small town boys who got a glance at the big wide world only through troop transports).          

This Hazel was an odd-duck from the get-go in his struggle against his inner demons. Kind of manic in everything he attempted to do right down to the determined stride of his walk, always on the edge when he did not get the respect he thought he deserved for his wisdom about what was what in the world. Always on the edge of some psychotic event. Had had it up to his head with religion and talk of redemption and salvation. Questioned the hell out of end sin and sorrows. Wanted to bring his hard-fought for message to an indifferent world. A world filled with the need to repent for some unknown original sin like the average person had caused the world’s sorrows. Wanted the world to know that it did not need Jesus-saving. Wanted most of all for people to stop fearing to take one step forward for fear that they would fall down in sin. A beautiful religion in a lot of ways, a way forward for a candid world.

The problem for Hazel, weak vessel Hazel, was two-fold though. Old Hazel wasn’t so sure that his struggle against religion, against temptation was over, was himself always half-looking looking for somebody to lead him if necessary. Someone, if you think in Freudian terms, to replace the father figure, the grandfather, who put the mark of Cain on him. The other problem is that in the small town world he was trying to preach the “Word” in was filled with fakers, charlatans, misfits, grifters, grafters, drifters, deadbeats and midnight sifters who wanted to get their messages out (read: run their own cons). So Hazel has to not only fight off an indifferent world, but a motley of con men on the hustle, itinerant religious fast-talkers with their own scripted visions of the new day coming, a teenage nymphomaniac trying to bring him to sexy sinless sin, miscreant youth, losers, fakers, bizarre cops, even more bizarre carny artists and in the end a lonely hearts landlady.

No wonder his went over the edge at the end. Went and literally blinded himself with quick lime, self-flagellated himself with barbed wire, walked with stones in his shoes to atone for the sins of the world by my reading. Such a man could not live in this mortal world and in the end he did not. Did not leave us with a viable church of all non-believers. Watch this one-and read Ms. O’Connor’s book too if you want to think about questions of redemption, salvation and just surviving in the modern world without some overbearing creed to stifle you.