Review of Honeydripper

Sayles soaks his paean to the blues in Southern mythology

by Zachary Wigon 

The blind guitar player. The runaway train-hopper. The drunken knife fight. The last chance at saving the establishment. They're all elements of folklore and mythology, be it Southern blues mythology (the first three) or cinematic mythology (the last one). How many films have we seen where a proprietor is told that if he doesn't pay up to The Man by some rapidly approaching deadline, his establishment will be taken from him? Quite a few come to mind, not the least of them being Sacha Baron Cohen's Ali G Indahouse. Honeydripper, the latest by John Sayles, is lacking in narrative originality, but this is far from a weak point. The recycling of blues folklore is central to the film's purpose: a romanticization of the seemingly idyllic '50s South, undercut with more prescient social analysis. We see people having a stompin' good time at a blues club one night, and a young black man arrested the next day, despite having done nothing wrong. The aforementioned man is Sonny (Gary Clark Jr.), a train-hopper who has made it to Harmony, Alabama by chance. He's a talented guitarist, and is central to the story. When Pinetop (Danny Glover), the proprietor of the Honeydripper Lounge, is told that his lease is up if he can't pay a significant amount of back rent, he places all of his hopes on one event: Guitar Sam, a popular Southern guitarist, is coming to play the Honeydripper. If Pinetop goes all-out on his advertising, he imagines he can bring in a big enough crowd to raise the money to pay the landlord back. There's just one snag - Guitar Sam never arrives. Waiting for him at the train station, Pinetop is told by someone else on the train that Guitar Sam never got on - he's fallen ill. Panicking, Pinetop decides that Sonny, who has already stumbled upon Pinetop's bar, should pretend to be Guitar Sam, as no one knows what he looks like. Adventure ensues. In the postmodern era of cynicism and irony, it's uncommon to come across works of art that are genuinely "about" genre tropes, without any traces of cynicism. Honeydripper is such a work. While it is fully aware of the cliched nature of its tropes and mythology, it doesn't approach of these elements in a manner that is any less than entirely genuine. Therein lies its strength. In the way that the Saturday night of "Guitar Sam's" performance is about having fun, and little else, the thrust of Honeydripper is to simply have a Really Good Time. This Really Good Time is supplied due to Sayles' deft purveyance of folklore mystique. At the same time, it's the film's shortcoming - the film is so interested in a genre-mythology reflexivity that it fails to take us anywhere new. The film's thrust is so strongly in the direction of unabashed enjoyment that its attempts to make serious commentary about the South are undercut. It's too fun for its own good. Honeydripper is a supremely enjoyable film, a stompin' good time. If ever there were a movie that made you feel like having a party in the theater, this film (due to its sublime third act) would be it. At the same time, once one leaves the theater, one might find little to discuss - or remember.

Posted on 01/29/08 by: FC Scribes 06:15 PM