Cast: Billy Crudup, Samantha Morton, Denis Leary, Jack Black, Will Patton, Holly Hunter, Dennis Hopper
Director: Alison Maclean
Producers: Elizabeth Cuthrell, Lydia Dean Pilcher, and David Urrutia
Screenplay: Elizabeth Cuthrell, David Urrutia, and Oren Moverman, based on the novel by Denis Johnson
Cinematography: Dam Kimmel
Music: Randall Poster
U.S. Distributor: Lions Gate Films
It's neither new nor revolutionary for a motion picture to be presented from the point-of-view of someone who is perpetually stoned. However, unlike most motion picture spirals into the drug culture, Alison Maclean's Jesus' Son offers a perspective that embraces, not alienates, the audience. The film's protagonist, the appropriately named "Fuckhead" (played with wide-eyed innocence by Billy Crudup), is impossible not to like, even though, like an inverted King Midas, everything he touches turns to dross. He views the world from a cocoon of naiveté that bleeds into the fabric of the motion picture. In essence, Jesus' Son is less about drug use than it is about the improbable journey of one dazed man through the drug culture of the '70s.
In its own peculiar way, Jesus' Son is a road picture, although it lacks the clear destination and straightforward trajectory that mark most such movies. Nevertheless, Fuckhead and his girlfriend, Michelle (Samantha Morton), are constantly on the move, usually in his VW Bug, crashing in cheap motels and rarely spending more than a few weeks in any one place. Along the way, they meet a number of odd characters - the ill-fated Wayne (Denis Leary), who offers Fuckhead a job even though the work messes with his high; Georgie (Jack Black), a hospital orderly who steals uppers and downers from medical cabinets; John Smith (Will Patton), who offers Michelle a better life; and Mira (Holly Hunter), whose husbands and boyfriends have a history of dying.
Jesus' Son defies a simplistic characterization. Despite the darkness of some of the material, and the tragedy associated with certain events, the film is surprisingly funny, and could almost be described as a dark comedy. The men and women who stumble through Fuckhead's drug-addled world are society's castoffs, and none of them come close to anyone's definition of "normal" (even by '70s standards). The film's structure is unusual - the story is presented as a series of narrated flashbacks that are often disconnected. For the most part, they're offered in chronological order, but not always. And, on one occasion, Fuckhead stops one flashback in the middle because he forgot to tell another story. So he goes back to the other incident before returning to where he left off. This approach - stringing together vignettes - works in the same way that an impressionist painting does - by taking a few steps back, you get a more textured view of the main character than a traditional narrative might provide.
The acting is superlative. Billy Crudup, who is not a big name despite a fairly lengthy resume, has the ability to disappear into his character - a trait that serves him well here. Crudup's approach is like that of Vincent Gallo infused with an injection of humanity (indeed, more than once during Jesus' Son, I found myself thinking of Gallo's directorial debut, Buffalo 66). Matching Crudup beat-for-beat is Samantha Morton, who is giving her third consecutive amazing performance (following Under the Skin and Sweet and Lowdown). Morton has the rare gift of being able to meld sweetness, vulnerability, and earthy sexuality into her portrayals. She plays Michelle with passion and abandon (witness the dancing scene where Fuckhead first meets her), and like her fellow British thespian, Emily Watson, she appears willing to do almost anything to satisfy the demands of a role (including master a flawless American accent). Other performers, such as Denis Leary, Dennis Hopper, Holly Hunter, and High Fidelity's Jack Black, have small (but colorful) parts.
In establishing her setting (the midwest during the early '70s), Maclean uses music as a sign post. The soundtrack is loaded with '70s tunes, but these aren't the run-of-the-mill songs that pepper every musical retrospective of the decade. They're utilized to set the mood; I didn't get the feeling that I was sitting through an extended advertisement for a CD. And, ironically, even though the film transpires in the country's heartland, most of it was actually shot in the northeast, just outside of Philadelphia.
Addiction is certainly one of the key themes explored by Jesus' Son, but it's not just the inescapable lure of heroin. Fuckhead is as addicted to Michelle as he is to drugs, and she proves to be a more difficult habit to shake than anything he can inject into his veins. Their magical, dysfunctional relationship provides the film's emotional core, and its absence during the final half-hour (as Fuckhead's life goes in a different direction) causes the movie to end on a flat note. Nevertheless, for her second motion picture outing (following 1992's Crush), the New Zealand-born Maclean has fashioned a strangely compelling montage of moments that, if not consistently memorable, are always engaging, often comedic, and sometimes even a little haunting.
© 2000 James Berardinelli