Reviewed by Tom Roberts
Stars Edward Hogg, Stephanie Astalos-Jones, Kirk Bovill, Owen Campbell, Carrie Fisher, Clay Steakley, Allison Varnes,
Raymond Waring, Muse Watson
Written by Eddy Moretti & Shane Smith
Certification UK 18
Runtime 92 minutes
Directed by Dominic Murphy
Take There Will Be Blood, ditch Plainview’s capitalist outlook, replace this addiction for making money with lots and lots of solvent abuse, keep the themes of religion and redemption, then make Plainview an even more twisted, mentally unstable nutjob and you’re not far off White Lightnin’.
There are heavy shades of Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic running throughout White Lightnin’. The story is a brooding biopic of one man’s life, Jesco White, from childhood through to adulthood. We first join Jesco, played by British newcomer Edward Hogg, as a young whippersnapper growing up in hillbilly Appalachia. Jesco is hooked on huffing gasoline, lighter fluid and anything else suitably trippy. Life for him is aimless: he is left to his own devices, to make his own fun. Boredom turns to mischief and mischief turns to sniffing solvents and spending time in the slammer. His father D Ray White, an Appalachian Mountain dancer, is his only saving grace. But inside of Jesco, dark demons reside ready to surface in an instant. And one day, when Jesco’s fragile existence is shattered, hell breaks loose: almost quite literally.
It’s a dark, dark film. A miserable, bleak film about one man’s futile battle to get on the straight-and-narrow. There are glimpses of hope: Jesco finds a semblance of solace in his love Enid, played by Carrie Fisher like you’ve never seen her before – chilli fellatio hilariously springs to mind. And his moral compass is somewhat better tuned than many of his neighbours’: he’ll happily dance for a black crowd despite his assistant’s racist protestations. But unfortunately nurture has won the battle against nature with Jesco and in a flash he becomes a monster. It’s a suitably epic performance by Hogg. With a sudden glint in his eye, Jesco transforms from a man into to a raging inferno personified. Like Daniel Day Lewis’s Plainview, Hogg is utterly compelling, quite capable of sharing the camera screen with nobody expect his insanity, for lengthy periods.
Stylistically, the cinematography and music match Jesco’s drug-addled state and spiral into madness perfectly. Scenes are punctuated by brief fades to black, zoning you out and then back into reality. The picture itself is almost completely washed out except for the slightest hint of colour, which threatens to suggest some glimmer of hope for Jesco. Throughout, a folksy soundtrack violently bashes your eardrums rarely seeming to cease, before turning into a grating, industrial soundscape and then finally gives way to the cackling devil itself. White Lightnin’ is a rip-roaring tale of a likeable rogue destined for oblivion. Jesco commits horrific atrocities, but he is a man in the grip of something – supernatural or not is for the audience to decide – beyond his control and for this reason he earns our empathy. It’s one of the most trippy, uncomfortable journeys committed to film in a long time, and one you must have sniff of.