In her home country of New Zealand, Alison Maclean is best known (at least in film circles) for her unsettling 14 minute film Kitchen Sink (1989). Debuting at Cannes, it kicked off a short film renaissance in NZ that has arguably yet to subside. She followed this with the 1992 feature Crush, an interesting sexual drama that places an American femme fatale figure (Marcia Gay Harden) into the NZ countryside. It received fairly mixed reviews but is still worth hunting down, if not for Harden’s performance alone.
Since then, Maclean has focused mainly on directing music videos (including Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn”) and episodes of TV shows as varied as Sex & the City, Homicide: Life on the Street and Gossip Girl. In 1999, her second (and to date, last) feature film premiered: Jesus’ Son, based on the short-story collection by Denis Johnson.
Johnson is probably best known for his National Book Award-winning and Pulitzer Prize-finalist novel Tree of Smoke, but his highly acclaimed Jesus’ Son continues to be influential to this day. It contains eleven stories that link together – through shared locations – characters that are on the bottom rung of society, scraping together a living and doing plenty of drugs. (In case you hadn’t made the connection, the title refers to the Velvet Underground song “Heroin.”) Johnson even has a cameo in this film as a man with a knife sticking out of his eye, but I’m getting ahead of myself…
Maclean and screenwriters Elizabeth Cuthrell, David Urrutia and Oren Moverman (writer-director of The Messenger and Rampart) have taken these stories and given them a single protagonist – something that the original collection hinted at, but never stated outright. That protagonist’s name is Fuck-Head.
Billy Crudup stars as FH, our intensely unreliable narrator, telling us his (fairly short, so-far) life story as a series of moments he may or may not have experienced, usually while under the influence of heroin or similar. FH was given his unfortunate nickname early on in his story and it happened to stick based on his habit of somehow screwing up everything he attempts. He falls for a girl named Michelle (Samantha Morton), who initially introduces him to heroin, and their turbulent relationship provides somewhat of a backbone to the mix of stories being told.
The very loose and episodic nature of the plot reflects both the original source material and FH’s mind, and thus the film becomes a series of great – or at least interesting – moments that usually have a touch of the surreal. An early highlight sees FH help his friend Wayne (Denis Leary) rip the copper wiring out of the walls of an abandoned house so they can sell it for booze money. FH takes great enthusiasm in smashing up the walls but, in a moment of calm, the pair look out the window to see a naked woman parasailing. Wayne remarks on what a beautiful sight it is before later adding when they get into the car, “That was my wife.”
The most hilarious, dark, twisted sequence occurs during FH’s employment as an orderly in a hospital. A man (Johnson) walks in with a hunting knife sticking out of his eye, the blade buried so deep as to not be visible. His wife has decided to blind him for peeping on the next door neighbour, but despite the gravity of the situation, the man is fairly calm – he even walked to the hospital! “Do you want me to call the police?” asks a nurse. “Uh… not unless I die,” he replies deadpan.
As you can expect from the title, the film contains quite a bit of religious imagery, but most of it is fairly superficial. At one point, FH looks out of a cafe and the pattern on the window makes it look like he has a crown of thorns. FH isn’t going to find God and follow His ways, but with this imagery finding its way into many scenes, there’s a strong spiritual implication to the journey FH is taking.
Just as important to FH’s tale are dreams. Dreams are constantly referenced throughout the film, whether by FH himself or by someone telling a story of one they had. There’s even a brief discussion of the Elvis’ film Follow that Dream. For someone who is constantly high, the world must appear fairly dream-like. And for someone recalling tales that occurred to them while they were constantly high, those moments would surely be closer to dreams than memories.
Jesus’ Son is not just a showcase for Maclean’s talents as a director, but for the talents of her outstanding ensemble cast. The film contains a rich smorgasbord of independent film actors, some established, some just starting out, and on top of Crudup, Morton, and Leary you’ll find: Holly Hunter, Jack Black, Dennis Hopper, Michael Shannon, Greg Gerrman, Will Patton, and even Miranda July in the only feature she’s appeared in that she wasn’t directing herself. A brilliant little independent film from the turn of the millennium, Jesus’ Son is one long hilarious and touching dream about a man finding personal salvation.
