Wise blood

𝑊𝑖𝑠𝑒 𝐵𝑙𝑜𝑜𝑑, ​​1979

A terrific, overlooked film by the great John Huston, which straddles the line between the serious and the laughable in a strange, insidious way. Only in the last part of the play does the viewer begin to realize the meaning of all that he has seen. That, in essence, this is a shocking tragedy, despite the abundant grotesque elements.

The protagonist is a rather neurotic, rather sociopathic, definitely teased guy, with mental scars from the war (just back from Vietnam or Korea) and the oppressive upbringing of his religious grandfather. Out of reaction he breaks all ties with the past and decides to become an anti-preacher, to establish a "Church of Christ without Christ" (!), in which "the blind shall not see, the lame shall not walk, and the dead shall remain as they have". People-chasing, single-minded, fanatical to the bone in his (anti)-beliefs, even when everything is going his way, he seems to suffer from a negatively charged overstimulation. The end of the play finds him breaking down in a manner strongly reminiscent of the fate of Oedipus: Self-blinding will belatedly grant him the bitter light of knowledge.

The sad lesson of the film (an adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's novel) is that it is often too late for a fresh start. And then you can't kill your demons without killing yourself. The attitudes that the hero had internalized due to a distorted upbringing (fanaticism, moral strictness, inhumanity, tendency to atone through cruel self-punishment), despite his fury to get rid of them, were reborn inside him disguised, thirsting for more blood, even his own.

The film - fortunately - is not as gloomy as it appears from the above, with its pathetic characters and the eccentric humor of the various situations giving it a special charm. Brad Duriff is amazing, it's like he was made to play this role. One of the best film adaptations of books.

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