Honeydripper
Directed by John Sayles. US. 2007. PG-13. Running time: 123 min.
Fri, May 9 thru Thu, May 15 -- Roll over to view showtimes.
*Join us for a concert before the 7:30 screening on Fri, May 9. At 7pm Guitar Sam will perform on our stage. Who is Guitar Sam? You'll have to come and find out!
*The concert and film on Fri, May 9 are FREE for all students.
Honeydripper, John Sayles’ shambling fusion of pop mythology and social mosaic, imagines the world-changing moment, around 1950, in the rural South when a blues guitarist first plugged in his ax and rocked the joint.
That cultural harbinger, Sonny Blake (Gary Clark Jr.), is an itinerant, freight-train-hopping young guitar wiz with no particular place to go, who stops off at the sleepy little town of Harmony, Ala. His instrument, cut from a solid woodblock and lacking a sound hole, emits rock ’n’ roll lightning at the Honeydripper, a dilapidated roadhouse on the verge of going out of business. Saturday night in America will never be the same.
Don’t go rushing to your rock encyclopedias for confirmation that any of this is scrupulously factual. Mr. Sayles, who wrote, directed and edited “Honeydripper,” is primarily interested in fusing archetypes from the Jim Crow South, both black and white, with mythic dimensions. An affable blind bluesman, Possum (Keb’ Mo’), whose enigmatic smile hints at his possession of secret knowledge, turns up now and again. Everywhere and nowhere at once, his elusive presence helps push the movie toward the realm of fable.(Stephen Holden, The New York Times).
Click here to continue reading Stephen Holden's review.
Click here to read Andrew O'Hehir's review on Salon.com.