Chrystal (2005) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

This film grossed $80,000. At the time I rented it, it was rated 4.0 at IMDb.

I figured it must suck mightily, right?

 I almost passed on it entirely when I collected the new releases from Blockbuster this week, but I broke down and rented when I saw that it was rated R for, among other reasons, nudity. Best decision I've made in a long time.

The official publicity spin says, "Set in the Ozark mountains, Chrystal combines red-dirt realism with the fabulist Southern literary tradition – part Flannery O'Connor, part Johnny Cash – to tell a wild and haunting tale of the power of true love." I think this may represent the first time I've ever agreed with one of those official blurbs. That sentence sums it up beautifully.

Chrystal is a story about a man who made a great mistake when he was young. He landed in prison when his own criminal activity caused a car accident that killed his son and left his wife partly paralyzed. Returning to his Ozark home as a middle-aged man, he does his best to attain redemption, sometimes failing, but also succeeding in about equal measure.

Let me cut to the chase on this one and say that it is a helluva movie. Set among the improverished rurals of Arkansas, it manages to portray their lives with humanity and compassion, yet without condescension. Unlike most Hollywood movies, it manages to tell a central story that is heartbreaking without being phony or syrupy, and without resorting to obviously manipulative musical cues. The background stories are sometimes more interesting than the main plot, and can be very funny, because the unaffected characters react to events in natural ways. Here's an example. When a woman tells her daughter solemnly that the family patriarch, apparently succumbing to senile dementia, was caught stealing a dress from a clothesline and wearing it, the daughter thinks a second, furrows her forehead in concern, and  asks, "How'd he look?" Mother and daughter erupt in tension-relieving laughter. There is humor, but the writing can also be delicate and poetic, and can also be gritty and realistic when required, following the tradition of the best Southern gothic writers. Hell, this is the screenplay Faulkner should have written when he was jerking off in Hollywood. The last act does include some unwelcome contrivances, but by that point, much like Magnolia, the film had earned the right to jump into the deep end.

Ray McKinnon, the writer and director of this film, is a fortyish character actor who had never before directed a feature film. Hadn't written one either. He didn't make many missteps in this film, and his only other directing effort of any kind, a short called "The Accountant" won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film! His direction in Chrystal was as good as his writing, so good that it's impossible to believe that he's a rookie. I paid attention to his storyboarding, what he was doing with camera movement, when he was choosing to change the focal point of a scene, how he backed up the story with the musical soundtrack, when he chose silence over music, his control of the cinematography, his use of the local culture for background, and so forth. By God, I don't know if Atom Egoyan or Jean-Pierre Jeunet could have done this film any better with the same budget! McKinnon may have made a couple of rookie mistakes here and there, but I'll just tell you right now that this weather-beaten sumbitch from Georgia jus plain done good.

Of course, it didn't hurt his story about Arkansas that he happens to be married to a good actress from Arkansas (Lisa Blount), and it surely didn't hurt his little redneck drama that his lead actor is the king of all the redneck actors, Billy Bob Thornton. (Kudos to Billy Bob for doing this. It must have been a labor of love because he couldn't have drawn much of a paycheck, and he turned in a good dramatic performance.) And it didn't hurt at all that McKinnon was able to play the antagonist himself, because he's a good character actor. Oh, I know you don't know his name, but you'd recognize him. Most recently, you may have seen his tall, thin frame wandering through the streets of "Deadwood," playing the naive and slightly dotty preacher in season one of that series.

Despite encomiums from IMDb members and some critics, almost nobody could be persuaded to pluck down any dollars to see it. It never made it onto more than 11 screens in the entire USA, and it didn't even do well in those few theaters, finally grossing only $80,000. Of course, this is a quiet, slow, literary, heartbreaking, and almost arty redneck film, an odd combination, so the potential audience is limited. I don't actually know how many people want to see an arty, slow, heartbreaking, 123 minute film about the Ozarks, but those who do have found their Holy Grail.