What a strange sex drive'n, blues playin’, Samuel L. Jackson quotin’, southern country trip...
“Black Snake Moan” (Rated: R; Running Time: 115 min.) — a film that, in the end, becomes more about family than an episode of “7th Heaven” — starts out with a divorce and Christina Ricci writhing on the ground half-naked, unable to control her sexual urges. Luckily for Rae (Ricci), Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) finds her beaten and unconscious on the side of the road. She had a hard night of partying in order to get over the fact that she cheated on her boyfriend, Ronnie (Justin Timberlake), because she can’t control her sexual desires and he done shipped out to the army.
While the trailers make it look like most of the film is about Jackson keeping Ricci chained up in his home in order to “cure her of her evil ways,” the chaining only plays a small part in the film, becoming a metaphor for Rae to grasp when she can’t control her nymphomaniacal urges. Instead of simply being a running gag involving Rae trying to escape from Lazarus, the film focuses on these two characters' lives and why both of them need each other — Lazarus becoming the father figure that was missing from Rae’s abusive childhood, and she becoming the daughter/woman that he never found.
Much like “Oh, Brother Where Art Though” did for Midwest America, “Black Snake Moan” defines itself, and southern black culture, with music. In this case it is the blues, with all the songs performed admirably by Jackson himself.
And a slice of small town southern culture is where the film really gets its soul, from faith to race to sex; “Black Snake Moan” takes a much more serious look at the culture outside of mainstream (or is it the mainstream?) America than any Hollywood film has in years. It does this, however, not with its nose up in the air but as if Lazarus himself had chained it to a radiator and said, “You’ll learn to respect this culture, because it has plenty to offer.”