Jesus' Son: Movie, DVD Review (2009)

So as not to offend anyone (God forbid), there’s no way I can tell you the name of the main character in Alison Maclean’s first American film, “Jesus’ Son." So, we’ll leave it at this: His initials are FH. The H stands for Head. The F stands for a word that punctuates every lousy, self-destructive, moronic thing he’s ever done to screw up his life.

FH, played brilliantly by Billy Crudup, is a sweet, likable junkie who destroys everything he touches. Caught in a continuous, drug-induced haze, he’s a hapless bit of bad luck who blows through the nightmare of his life in a giddy, semi-conscious state that sometimes gives itself over to moments of absolute clarity, as witnessed in an early scene where he leaps out of a truck to whirl about in a field: “Ah, this sudden crispness, this beautiful chill, the tang of everything stabbing me!”

The way Crudup plays him, FH comes off as an innocent, a lumbering dolt who seems as astonished as we are by the grave mistakes he keeps making in his life.

Based on--and faithful to--Denis Johnson’s acclaimed, 1992 collection of short stories, “Jesus’ Son” is a road movie told in flashback that covers five years in FH’s life during the early 1970s.

At times hilarious and other times disturbing, it fractures time just as neatly as Johnson does in his stories, while also sustaining a similar staccato rhythm. The overall effect is a film that jumps nicely from landmark event to landmark event in ways that suggests the chemical-induced holes in FH’s memory will never be filled.

And yet none of this plays out like a tragedy--it’s more hopeful than that. At its core, it’s about FH’s relationships, the most important of which centers around his junkie girlfriend, Michelle (Samantha Morton, perfect), a casualty of the times who’s more afloat than FH--and far weaker.

With Holly Hunter, Denis Leary, Jack Black and Dennis Hopper in strong supporting roles, “Jesus’ Son” could have used some trimming toward the end, but that’s nit-picking. In its quest to explore and discover FH’s spiritual reawakening, this film mounts an unforgettable experience.

Grade: A-