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Honeydripper is about race, fried chicken and the birth of electric blues aka rock & roll
John Sayles has made 16 films, each a unique vision. From Return of the Secaucus 7 to Lone Star, this maverick director has turned out Art House faire that has been universally praised. His latest is Honeydripper a slice of life film about the rural south of Harmony Alabama.
The story is about Tyrone Purvis (Danny Glover) the owner of The Honeydripper Lounge a little shack that serves drinks and food, known for fried chicken and pork chops. His long-time entertainer, the blues belting Bertha Mae, has stopped drawing in the crowds. It seems that the locals are drawn to the juke joint next door, another shack with a machine full of tunes. To reverse his fortunes and save his business, he hires Guitar Sam a big name New Orleans R&B star for a single night show.
On the other side of the plot, a young Sonny Blake is coming into town, looking for work with a guitar case in his hands. He tries to get a gig at The Honeydripper and is soundly rejected. But he does catch the eye of Tyrone’s daughter. After leaving the club, the young man is arrested for vagrancy by the local Sheriff. This guitar player is forced to pick cotton. It seems that the Sheriff has some kind of a system for getting very cheap labor, he also runs a bit of an extortion racket.
Well, Tyrone finds out that his big one night sensation is going to be AOL. In a panic, he decides that the kid can fake his way in being Guitar Sam. And the rest of the plot is revealed--the group of Tyrone’s friends and confidants decide to pull off the big switch. There is also a bind muse of a mystic guitar picker that runs rough-shot over the narrative.
John Sayles knows how to tell story. He captures both the feel and the sounds of this specific era of music, the cusp of rock and roll. He also gives the audience a large group of interesting characters and easily connects the dots between them. But he takes too long to draw them together. He gives us too many characters on which to focus, making the overall feel more of a miniseries than a motion picture.
But the performances are wonderful, starting with Danny Glover. He plays Tyrone as a complicated man with problems that have little good solutions. Bobbing and weaving to grasp his resolution, his answers become hard choices. Through it all he never gives up.
Mary Steenburgen has a very small role as the personification of white dominance. Her motherly character doesn’t see anything wrong with the status quo since she is the one on top. I thought that Gary Clark, Jr. gave a fine reading as the young blues guitarist. With the swagger of Chuck Berry and the mechanical skills of Les Paul, he turns his character into a hard-rocking, gizmo-tinkering renascence man.
Honeydripper is a decent piece of Art House cinema that will be forgotten when the 2008 Oscar Race goes into full swing. It is entertaining and has some fine performances but it is also nothing more than a light film.
