Philadelphia Weekly

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Honeydripper

Directed by John Sayles
B-
Reviewed by Matt Prigge
Now showing

Is there a filmmaker less stylistically attuned to a film about music than John Sayles? Where his British counterpart Ken Loach fills his movies with infectious hang-out sessions with working-class characters, Sayles prefers directness, laying out his various social concerns as plainly as possible.

Honeydripper finds the independent legend descending upon a '50s Alabama roadhouse to chart the evolution of blues into rock (before the white man stole it, of course), but its rhythm remains unmistakably Sayles': patient, often stubbornly so, moving at the pace of the actors, who are given plenty of time to do their thing.

In fact, it's hard not to read a touch of autobiography in the film's titular bar: Run by longtime schemer Danny Glover, it's been so faithful to hiring old blues musicians that its patronage has been absconded by the loud, raucous juke joint down the street. No one's ever going to question Sayles' Amerindie film-god status, but the '00s have found him struggling for that balance between lefty message-mongering and his gift for rich characterization, leaving him lost in the classification of cinema he helped foster.

Honeydripper doesn't exactly awaken the great John Sayles (let's say pre-Limbo), nor does it feel like underimagined slogs like Casa de los Babys and Silver City. Indeed, the plot is Sayles' highest concept outside of the creature features and Hollywood fare he writes for paychecks (among them, the upcoming Spiderwick Chronicles and Jurassic Park IV). Fathoms in debt, Glover, along with right-hand man Charles S. Dutton, hires a hot new R&B act to come in for a one-night hoedown. When the guy doesn't show, Glover employs a recently arrived wandering musician (Gary Clark Jr.) to pretend to be him.

But this is still a Sayles movie, meaning the plot gears take their sweet time and the focus terminally wanders to the many subplots, including Lisa Gay Hamilton as Glover's increasingly religious wife and the local questionably run cotton fields.

But unlike most Sayles films, Honeydripper seems perversely designed. Joy is deliberately withheld till the end, when Clark Jr. takes to the stage, at which point what had been a typically fascinating, well-researched and dry Sayles movie suddenly and unexpectedly starts to fucking rock. It's a remarkable turn of events, all the more of a whammy because of its unlikeliness. And just when you think Sayles will break the spell with a ponderous epilogue, he thwarts expectations yet again.

Honeydripper's a baby step, but a step nonetheless.

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