Jesus' Son (2000)
Cast: Billy Crudup, Denis Leary, Holly Hunter, Samantha Morton, Jack Black Director: Alison Maclean Writers: Elizabeth Cuthrell, David Urrutia, and Oren Moverman, based on the novel by Denis Johnson
Review by Scott Hunt Movie Hunt: http://netdirect.net/~hunt/index.html
Rating: Near Miss (2 out of 4 stars)
Jesus' Son floats along with the hallucinatory feel of a drug addict's sense of recollection. It's not so much a movie as it's a well made patchwork quilt of memories. Its tales are woven together through FuckHead, or F.H. (Crudup), an intrinsically sweet young man who stumbles into the drug culture of the 70's. He remembers his life in a stream of consciousness, often interrupting himself to fumble back and forth through the gaps in his memory. It has a severely episodic feel with no sequence carrying more weight than another, save one. The film is based upon a collection of short stories in novel form by Denis Johnson, which based itself on a line from a Lou Reed song, "....When I'm rushing on the run, and I feel just like Jesus' son..."
F.H starts on his decent through the unknowing lure of Jezebel-like Michelle (Morton), who shoots up in front of him after their first night of lovemaking as he looks on, cluelessly munching a bowl of cereal. Soon both of them are suffocating in a fog of drugs. Morton infuses Michelle with equal parts of feistiness and emotional dependence in a shaded performance. F.H. displays an incessant hunger for Michelle's attention. Their love affair comes across not so much as heart felt emotion, but rather a vampiric sucking of life force. Drugs have leeched away part of their ability to connect with others and they use each other, much as a drug, to continue to feel something in their nomadic lives. Their love affair ends badly, as does anything F.H. touches, hence his name.
F.H meets a possible future version of himself in Leary's character, a worn sparkplug of a man who long ago quit firing effectively. His hollow eyed husk of a man takes F.H. on an employment opportunity that consists of ripping the copper wiring from an apartment that may, or may not, belong to him. They sell the precious metal to fund a day of drinking and heroin and simpleton F.H. considers it one of the best days of his life. F.H. sees no moral implication to his actions or others. He simply exists in the moment. Leary's character shows the consequences of such a myopic view of life, a fate F.H. almost shares, if not for the twisted touch of his love for Michelle.
Holly Hunter as sensitive woman with a touch of death, Will Patton as a smarmy, albeit brief suitor for Michelle and Dennis Hopper as a recovering drug addict clinging to life each get a vignette sprinkled with some sharp, revealing lines. They give solid readings, but none truly stand out as does Jack Black as a fellow orderly F.H. works with in a hospital emergency room.
Georgie's (Black) Zen-like lunacy fuels some of the few laugh out loud moments as he performs unauthorized surgery on a man with a knife stuck in his eye, or performs his own seemingly hunger induced surgery on some road kill. Not only is it black humor at it's finest, but turns a probing eye on F.H.'s inability to cope with momentous events in his life as his memory is retold in two different lights.
Several times, subtle allusions are made to Jesus, each done in a disturbing fashion. At one point F.H. looks through the window of a diner, the lettering on the window making it seem as it he has a crown of thorns. He follows a snakeskin wearing man for no reason off the subway, and is surprised to find himself inexplicably aroused by his encounter with the serpent. A couple of times, people make reference to him not being "the one.
Jesus' Son meanders along pointlessly. There's no plot to speak of, simply a recovering addict's ruminations on what brought him to the point he is. I wanted to feel emotional attachment to the angelic F.H., but as the film ended I realized I didn't really know him, so how could I truly care about him? I saw what heroin had made him, but I never got a real glimpse at the man he was before his adventure in wonderland. In telling his tale, he never manages to connect with the listener.
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