Black Snake Moan

By Joe De Matteo

Super

Black Snake Moan is a story about the power of the human being. The power to tear a person down, rip them to shreds and spit them out into nothingness; nothingness that still lives and breathes, still has to get up each day and get to the end of it.

There is that, and then there is the power that a human being has to love. That one four-letter word holds the real power when it's energized by God.

Wait now. You're right. It's that old battle between Good and evil. It's laid out for us by Son House, in his explanation of the Blues, which is woven through the film

When a human being works through this kind of love, that human can heal the wounds that a hundred have inflicted, even the worse wounds; the self inflicted ones.

Laz, Samuel L. Jackson, knows what it is to be brutalized, he knows the blues.

Rea, Christina Ricci, hell, she's so beat up she doesn't know the sky from the ground.

But the blues are a funny thing, they teach you compassion, they teach you love, the dig-your-heals-in kind of love.

The music is wonderful, heartfelt blues. Jackson is perfect; all the baggage he carries from his other rolls, come together to help you understand Laz, though Laz is not a character you've seen before. Ricci, well, I'm afraid to say too much and be switching this from a discussion of love to one of lust. Jokes aside she works her heart out in this film, and she tells a seamless story. She'll introduce you to a new person, Rae. And you'll know all the gory details about Rae's sad, pathetic and brutal life.

I loved her. There are so many people to love in the film.

I remember being a boy and seeing T bone Walker on this little black and white TV we used to have. He was singing the blues - maybe the first memory I have of my favorite kind of music. He was singing about sad things, how life and love were beating him up. He finished the last sad line on a down-beat, stepped back from the microphone and gave a little laugh. That has always been the blues to me, that laugh. It was like a puff of steam coming out of Mamma's pressure cooker.

When it all gets so bad, and it's been bad for so long, it becomes normal; it is your life. And when this emotion translated from a feeling to words and music, and that translation is right that other people respond to it - "me too" to it, well, it translates back into an emotion and that just might works it's way into the light of day in the form of a small laugh.

Black Snake Moan is a keeper.