black keys

under review: "Black Snake Moan"

On first thought:

"i think i slept through half of black snake

"it seemed to be a mostly political statement about how america is fucked, soldiers are pussies, guitars are like penises of virtue, black people can save the day but there are different kind of black people. also, women should be chained up."

On second thought:

"human sexuality in the movie is reduced to strange angers and mysterious spells. aside from the political allegories in it the main motif was sorcery, spells and evil, which can be trumped by good will. and while some of that evil comes from within the characters, it represents as something more like possession than conflicted humanity. thus you have guilt without responsibility, evil without consequence. morality becomes something to enrage humans, or give them sorrow or redemption, just as much as magic. morality's source is unknown, but the thing itself is an object rather than a force, and can be manipulated. ethics, or the world's own will, god's real preferences, which can be understood but not chosen by us, not willed, in other words truth, seems ignored. i suppose truth too can be object, insofar as it is held and communicated by humans, but this is to conflate a certain kind of truth with truth as such. fate turns out to be nothing other than the way things happen, and has none of the correspondence of history. past and future have nothing to say to one another, the connection is cut. the most interesting element in the movie (the four elements being sex, evil, will, and fear) is fear, and is touched regretfully only through justin timberlake's enlisted soldier, at the bookends of the film, when he on the day before reporting to training pukes in the toilet, and later, after he has disgraced himself by quitting the army, crowded by giant trucks on the highway as he and his redeemed whore lady (the soldier and the whore is a longstanding storytelling tradition) drive from here to eternity, he pulls onto the shoulder and sobs into the steering wheel."