"Sling Blade" is about white trash without Hollywood's insufferably
patronizing comedy. The actors all look like the leftovers from a Grateful
Dead concert, but they're helluva good actors, which makes the movie a masterful
debut.
It's about Karl, who may be a retard, but imprisonment has freed Karl to
do what nobody else can afford to do. Billy Bob Thornton plays Karl as
only the man who wrote this film could do. The writer's moral perspective
twists your mind around and challenges your comfy assumptions about killers.
It shows us the angle of somebody who's a few sandwiches shy of a picnic--yet
it doesn't mean he's wrong. And it doesn't mean he doesn't have to pay.
The script is deceptively spare (like a Richard Ford novel). Having been
treated like a dog and made to sleep and live in a shed growing up, Karl
experiences the prison of the state mental hospital as a civilizing force.
He reads - and believes - the Bible. When he's released, he's under the
onus of having murdered his mother. As he embarks on a friendship with
young Frankie, who is also subject to abuse, we know what Karl's going to
do. You have to watch the tragedy played out, because Karl gets under your
skin.
He makes friends with Frankie, whose mama invites Karl to come live in their
garage. It gives him a home. It shows him what love is - or could be.
His sense of justice is awakened when a cussed jerk named Doyle decides
to become the head of the household. Doyle is played by c & w singer
Dwight Yoakam with an ornery edge that can only come from somebody unafraid
of the legendary losers in country music ballads. (Dwight has a band in
the movie, and it's awful, but this in-joke doesn't ruin anything.)
You can argue about what the movie means - justifiable homicide? insanity
defense? It seems to me the movie is about the desire to protect the innocent
from the cruelty of the world. Maybe there are no innocents. But within
the scope of this film, both Frankie and Karl are grappling with grown-ups,
trying to understand what's happening or happened to them. Young Frankie's
ten-year-old clarity illuminates Karl's flat-footed acceptance of the world
that's done nothing but hurt him. Together they remind us that innocence
is the ability to suffer pain without understanding why.
"Karl" is as memorable as Travis Bickle or Jon Voigt's midnight
cowboy. We know the Arkansas backwater town from southern literature, but
the character is startlingly original and rivetting. He does something
with his voice at the end of a sentence to signal that he means what he
says. It's almost an animal noise, a double hum or grunt that Frankie describes
to his mom as the sound of a race car. It's the sound of a voice deep inside
trying to get out. But there's also a weird satisfaction in being trapped.
It's the movie in a nutshell. - Karen Jaehne
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