Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus | 
 enlarge | Director: Andrew Douglas
Actors: Harry Crews, Johnny Dowd, David Eugene Edwards, The Handsome Family, Rev. Gary Howington
Studio: Homevision
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.99
Buy New: $17.99
You Save: $2.00 (10%)
New (32) Used (9) from $11.15
Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 26665
Format: Color, Dolby, Dvd-video, Full Screen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 82
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: DHVE3000D
UPC: 014381300024
EAN: 0014381300024
ASIN: B000E1OI8U
Theatrical Release Date: 2003
Release Date: March 14, 2006
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Description
Take a captivating and compelling road trip through the creative spirit of the American South, a world of churches, prisons, coalmines, truckstops, juke joints, swamps and mountains. Along the way you'll meet musicians including the Handsome Family, Johnny Dowd, 16 Horsepower, and David Johansen, old time banjo player Lee Sexton, and novelist Harry Crews. This film is a collage of stories and testimonies filled with sudden death, sin and redemption... and all the while, a strange Southern Jesus looms in the background.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 23 more reviews...
 So wrong its right August 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This documentary captures an energy that can`t be denied and shows us people grappling with a world view that doesn`t seem to allow anyone to sit on the fence.Yet Jim White seems to have found a middle path, through his art and his own lifelong struggles. A surreal and riveting existential quest.
Pecans stands, C-BG-Bs, Coal Dust, and Jesus June 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a VERY seductive documentary. Sneaky almost. You could start out a Yankee intellectual, nodding away, checking out the always cool backwoods backwards Southern hick "culture", sarcastically noting to yourself "A documentary of the South made by an English director - hah - what's the denominator...bad teeth?
Then somewhere in between the Louisiana swampland and the West Virginia coal mines, you get so captivated by the gorgeous local color, and lowball sincerity and hiball poetry of the narrator host, that a Stockholm syndrome kicks in, and, I swear to God, you start feeling a little wood for the Pentacostals.
A real Rosetta stone for unlocking the documentary is a scene in a Motel 6 room somewhere in Appalachia. Two guys are kicking back, doing an old folk blues number. The singer looks vaguely familiar in a Waylon Jennings kinda way - cowboy hat, outlaw sideburns and beard, casual clothes - and I remember thinking, "looks almost like David Johansen".
Later, the credits roll, you check out the additional footage, and guess what? It WAS David Johansen. Now think about this for a moment. Here's an actor and performer of consummate taste. He was once front man for the glam rock/proto punk New York Dolls. Then he had a popular run as Buster Poindexter, lounge singer tux-traodinaire, and here he is, totally submerged in and imbued with the persona of a Southern folk blues artist. A bit of a latter day Leon Redbone.
You can call this "Southern Gothic", and I do, and it has this core irony that Johansen illustrates by his very presence. On the one hand, the culture has an authenticity and a history, that go way back and way deep, and many of the people in this film are so a part of it they have no other perspective. BUT, some do, and there is also an existential element, exemplified by "choosing Jay-suss". You can adopt the culture, if it's done with a pure heart, and not be self-conscious or hypocritical. This point is made very clearly at the beginning of the movie by the narrator who explains that he grew up in the South, left it, and came back, deciding to be "the very best Southerner he could be at that point".
So the documentary has a whole nuther layer to think about. The conflict and unity possible between the heart and the mind. John Huston's adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood is the only other film I can think of that takes you so deep into this other world right before our eyes, or at least, within five miles of the Interstate. Beautiful film. Beautiful music. A beautiful docu-poem. And done with a pure heart.
the southern states of mind March 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have never been to the south, and that ain't nothing strange growing up in a town in Holland, but seeing this great documentary I was ready to pack my bags, buy a rambling piece of rust car and get lost into the swamps and the mountains and the little towns you drive in and out in the blink of an eye. I hope I would have Jim White as a guide again though. What a great character.
Nice extras on the DVD too, some recordings of the people you say playing during the film.
Hell, don't only buy the film, buy the soundtrack too while youre at it :)
Haunting December 28, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a film about a region, its people and a kind of music. There is a haunting uneasiness in this music: in the high whine of steel and string, in the subject of the lyrics, and the facial expressions. That haunting wraps and holds you from inside; it is comforting.
Jim White's music, and the music of the other artists is about strife, and untimely death. The cinematography pulls you along on this trip. I found myself anticipating each scene from the hound running through the swamp, to author Harry Crews ambling down a dirt road telling us about how stories were made up in the south, about "perfect" Sears and Roebuck catalog models with no missing fingers, who still had both of their eyes.
Knowing Jim's music (which inspired the documentary) made it all more rich and understandable. Some have looked in, without knowing the poverty, the regional isolation, or Jim's Wrong-Eyed Jesus music, and have written reviews saying that this is an exploitation of unfortunate people. But they missed the beauty of the struggle, and the triumph in the people's stories.
 Garbage! November 6, 2007
1 out of 10 found this review helpful
I had to turn this #$%& off after 20 minutes because I hated it so much. It's a real bummer too because I had been looking forward to seeing it forever.
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