Venus, Black Snakes and Dirty OId Men

Two films I had the chance to see recently, back-to-back, were Venus (dir. Roger Michell) and Black Snake Moan (dir. Craig Brewer), two low-budget indie films from last year. I honestly hadn't intended to consider the two films together - they were simply two that were on my "to see" list and I happened to pick both of them up on the same night. What I didn't realize is that they shared so much, but differed in important ways.

Both films have the same general narrative gimmick - an older man (in the case of Venus, a cadaverous Peter O'Toole, in Black Snake Moan, Samuel L. Jackson) crosses paths at a crucial point in his life with a young, attractive, libidinous woman. Temptation ensues, eventually both characters learn "life lessons" in the tedious Bob McKee tradition and emerge healed. Of the two, I'd have to give Black Snake Moan the edge, simply because its setting (the deep south) and its metaphorical carpet (southern gothic blues) is less well-trodden ground than in the case of Venus's aging, Shakespeare-quoting, whiskey-drinking British. Both films, though, have an essential sweetness, an old-fashioned sense of romance and humanity that is enormously appealing.

What superficially drives the drama in both cases is the immortal question, "Will they or won't they?" Venus simply tosses the issue away early on, with O'Toole having prostate surgery that renders the question academic. Black Snake Moan toys with it a bit more seriously, but ultimately both films are playing past the titillation, and are more interested in treating the characters as lost souls in need of each other's rescue.

There's a darkness to both films, but ironically it's Venus that tells the darker story in the "lighter" surroundings of autumnal London, and Black Snake Moan that takes the more heartwarming route in the deep, myth-laden vernacular of the South. Venus is about O'Toole's character coming to know himself through the girl, having one last hurrah, but is finally about death. Black Snake Moan touches on death but veers away from it towards life. Where death hangs over Venus, it simply passes through Black Snake Moan. John Cothran's character in Black Snake, Rev. RL., articulates this explicitly in a moving, gentle speech about how religion has it all wrong in focusing on heaven, when really it should focus on what's happening day to day. In Venus, the characters learn how to die with dignity (a process which, ironically, involves a great deal of indignity), whereas in Black Snake, the characters learn how to live with it.

An interesting PS to my thoughts on these films comes from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops which, you may be surprised to hear, offers some perceptive and intelligent film analysis on their website, but in the case of these films, their objections are telling. Their take on Venus is that it is "morally offensive", whereas Black Snake Moan they simply rate as "limited", that is, appealing to a limited audience who may be turned off by the moral offenses in it. Their objection seems to essentially come down to, unsurprisingly, sex. The O'Toole character is offensive because he wants sex, but can't physically have it, where as Jackson's character is not as offensive, because he is capable of it, but chooses not to. The Bishops, whose opinion I generally respect, seem to have missed the point of both films, in that they are, neither of them, really about sex. Of course, the notion of "dying with dignity" doesn't seem to hold much water with Catholic dogma, either, so perhaps this is a part of their issue with Venus. Interesting, though, that desire is at the heart of it. I think it would make an interesting moral discussion, but in the meantime, feel free to enjoy both films.