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DVD review | ‘Honeydripper’ is a surreal look back at rock’s roots
But don’t look for dramatic naturalism from John Sayles’ latest. The seemingly realistic locale is just a setup for a wallow in the mythic South and the birth of rock ’n’ roll.
“Honeydripper” never played theatrically in Kansas City. But comes out on DVD today, which gives us an opportunity to see indie avatar Sayles in a lyrical frame of mind.
The Honeydripper of the title is a roadhouse operated by Tyrone “Pinetop” Purvis (Danny Glover). Here you can sip cheap whiskey and watch a great vocalist like the aged Bertha Mae (Mable John) shout out the blues. Trouble is, nobody in 1950 wants to hear that old-timey music … everybody on the black side of town is hanging out at another bar with a newfangled jukebox.
Tyrone is deep in debt, can’t get credit and is stealing electricity from the power company. The Honeydripper’s days are numbered unless he can pull a rabbit from his hat.
The “rabbit” would be Guitar Sam, a New Orleans bluesman whose voice is all over the radio. Tyrone starts nailing up posters announcing a big Guitar Sam show. All he needs is one night of great business to put things right.
All this is set up in a long, talky introductory scene in the Honeydripper that plays exactly like a stage play from the 1950s. The pacing, the exposition, the introduction of characters, the confined space … it’s all very theatrical. It’s as if writer/director Sayles is warning us not to get too literal.
Indeed, “Honeydripper” soon begins messing about with magical realism. Bluesman Keb’ Mo’ plays an all-knowing blind guitar picker who comes and goes out of thin air while delivering wry observations. And there’s a new kid in town (Gary Clark Jr.) who carries a weird-looking contraption that we’re told is an electric guitar (nobody hereabouts has ever seen one). This newcomer runs afoul of the local sheriff (Stacy Keach) but gets out of jail in time to substitute for the incapacitated Guitar Sam.
Of course the minute he starts crunching away on his electrified ax, a new music is born and the crowd goes wild.
“Honeydripper” isn’t a social document about the bad old days before civil rights. Sayles is offering an idealized vision of the way things used to be, an environment where even the crooked lawman is more amusing than threatening. It’s a risky approach and could have gone seriously wrong.
But Sayles has assembled a terrific cast of players who find just the right tone to match the material.
As the gravel-voiced, low-key Tyrone, Glover has rarely been better. He has one showstopping scene in which he tickles the keys and fantasizes about the first slave to surreptitiously put his hands on his owner’s piano. Feeling the music flowing though his fingers, the imaginary slave gasps: “Lord help me. I could do some damage with this thing.”
He gets flawless support from Charles S. Dutton as Maceo, his bartender and handyman, and Lisa Gay Hamilton and Yaya DaCosta as his wife and teenage daughter.
It took about half of “Honeydripper’s” running time to convince this viewer that Sayles’ conceit could work. By the time the big show is in full swing, though, you may have to resist the impulse to boogie in your living room.