Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus

As a response to others: Places like this do exist. When you talk about how rare they are and refer to them as "armpits" you are only expressing your ignorance. This movie is not trying to convey the South. It is this small town southern culture that you are oblivious to that they are trying to show and they do so effectively.

Firstly, the cinematography is hair raisingly beautiful. The color used almost looks Hollywood in style. The grays greens and browns are bleak and beautiful. Secondly the characters are excellently picked. Jim is a little stiff but is sincere enough that he is believable. His cowboy philosophy gets to be a little much at times but slows down towards the end of the film. The music throughout just adds to the story and also slows down in the second half. I really don't want to talk about too much just watch and be taken into a world that you may not be familiar with (even if you live in the same region).

This was the best movie i saw in 2005, and i even saw it in the theater twice. That's 10.50 for a ticket and i saw it twice! It is the perfect blend of beautiful cinematography, interesting subject matter and music, and exceptional editing. On top of all of that the camera work was unbelievable. That one scene where they man and the women are singing in the barbershop left me with that awesome feeling of "how the hell did they do that?" which I haven't felt since the elevator shot in Touch of Evil. Every time I talk to a friend about movies i tell them to see this one right away, and I don't do that a lot. I read a newspaper article that described Wrong Eyed Jesus as a "Surrealist Look at the South," and it is. It is a collage of incredible sights and sounds that will leave you breathless.

"Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus" is a great documentary, it took me into a world I had never seen, the world of deep-South music combined with Pentacostal fanaticism. Great website too, see it at www.searchingforthewrongeyedjesus.com. I saw this movie at the LA Film Festival in June, 2004, and had no idea what to expect. The culture of lower-middle class rural Southern whites (mostly in Louisiana) is a world of work Monday-Friday, get REAL drunk on Saturday, and show up to church on Sunday with a hangover. The movie shows a certain intensity to this "Southern week", as there isn't much else to do but work, drink, and church in those parts. Oh, and play music. Some incredible solo artists and bands that I've never heard of are in this films as well! Jim White, Johnny Dowd, The Handsome Family, 16 Horsepower, and Trailer Bride just to name a few. This is one of the most original documentaries I've seen in the last five years, and I've seen quite a few. Go see it!

Strongly recommended. I would ruminate, based on close examination of my late grandmother, that there's a ragged wound in the center of all white Southerners still oozing over the unrepentant evil of slavery. Nowadays, that would manifest as what Jim White calls in 'Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus,' "a loneliness for God," a vague dread that nothing can ever really be made right in this world. Add to this, the muttered self-loathing of all rural, poor America, stumbling the parapet between fundamentalism and crystal meth. The South is just more lyrically insane than Nebraska. To this special purpose, some call the songs of White, Johnny Dowd, and Brett and Rennie Sparks (all whom perform splendidly in the movie) 'Gothic,' but Amazon files it under 'Americana,' with Twain, with Bierce, and with Gee's Bend, Alabama, an appellation more honest and, in the end, the proper place for this movie.

As a 'stranger' to the American culture, I was really impressed by this docu-movie. It gives me a look in the American South. Of course one can not give a complete portrait of something. There always a need for some subjectivity. I understand there a million other sides of the American South.

For example, if you make a movie about Holland, surely you'll see mills and klompen. This is not representative for modern-day Holland, but it's a part of our culture, our history. I think the same applies to this movie.

Apart from this, the movie is intertwining music, art and storytelling. This is fantastic!