Black Snake Moan (2007)

I saw this movie in the theater when it was released and remembered two things: the chain and the nudity. The rest kinda floated away on a cloud of booze and hundreds of other movies released that year, and it was not a good year for movies. What I did not remember was the musical about trauma and healing that Black Snake Moan becomes.

     A nymphomaniac (Ricci) missing her soldier boyfriend is nursed back to health by an old blues musician (Jackson) whose wife has recently left him. That's the simple synopsis that leaves out the part where he chains her to a radiator or she takes every opportunity during the first half of the movie to get drunk and fuck. A movie about judging books by their covers, I'm saying.

     This is a two-hander between Jackson and Ricci. Both are giving crazy good performances, plumbing depths of heart ache and pain that had me sitting up a few times. The characters are hurt either by broken dreams or past traumas and find each other through kindness and compassion offered first by Jackson and then understanding by Ricci. And there's that bit where he chains her to the radiator.

     Everyone else in the movie is a mixed bag. Most come and go in quick scenes to establish more about Jackson and Ricci's characters. They give very little to the overall story. The two that stand out are Justin Timberlake and Michael Raymond-James. The less said about Timberlake the better as he tries to give a subtle performance that rises to high school play levels. Michael Raymond-James establishes himself as the primary villain pretty early on, just a general scumbag, but lacks any real charisma in the role to be more memorable than a chain and a radiator.

     Look, she's not really chained to the radiator that long. Maybe a quarter of the movie. Let's get past it. 

     Stand out scenes are about the two of them processing trauma. Jackson gets most of his trauma out through music, playing blues guitar with more emotion than real skill that makes it feel authentic and worthwhile. Ricci packs in desperation for connection with an unhealthy sexiness and as she gets more control we see the character's strength and willingness to confront the horrors of her life. These two collide in a spectacular scene during a thunderstorm where Jackson hammers away at the titular song, a drunken spoken word mumble about abortion, while Ricci clings to his leg and flashes on abuse suffered when she was younger. Powerful and emotional.

     A damn fine example of the sex and pain drama genre, check it out.