A lyrical Southern portrait

Roaring through the South in a beat-up 1970 Chevy Impala, alt-country singer-songwriter Jim White gives a guided tour to some of the off-the-interstate locales and milieus that inspire his music in the decidedly strange, delightfully demented documentary “Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus.”

Inspired by White’s 1997 album, “The Mysterious Tale of How I Shouted Wrong-Eyed Jesus,” director Andrew Douglas and writer Steve Haisman endeavored to find the roots of the deeply spiritual yet earthy music. The distinctly nonlinear film that results is ultimately informed by the South’s passion for storytelling in its portrayal of the saints and sinners who inhabit a world that has changed little in the last 50 or 100 years. “Truth of the matter was, stories was everything and everything was stories,” cult novelist Harry Crews opines in his characterization of the importance mythmaking has to the culture.

White is joined by musicians the Handsome Family, Johnny Dowd, 16 Horsepower and David Johansen, who act as the film’s haunted Greek chorus, as he goes on a journey through the back roads of Florida, Virginia, Louisiana and Kentucky. With a 300-pound statue of Jesus in the trunk of the Chevy, White sets off on his road trip speaking into the camera as he explains the nature of his musical journey as “trying to find the gold tooth in God’s crooked smile.”

Though he considers himself an “imitation Southerner” -- he moved to Florida from Southern California when he was 5 -- White has a knack for conjuring archetypal characters in his songs who are trenchantly resonant of the South but also stridently unique. With religion being a powerful force in their lives, the natives interviewed in the film, whether at a prison, a trailer park or a truck stop, spin gothic micro-narratives describing the grip that the good-versus-evil paradigm has on them. As one convict discusses his struggle to toe the line, he attributes his current predicament simply to the fact that “bad’s more fun.”

The film emphasizes the music and its sources, mixing performances by professionals and local amateurs on a soundtrack full of gospel, blues and White’s own dark musings. Through his impressive visuals, Douglas finds great beauty and poetry in the bayous, bars and two-lane highways of the region. His background as a photographer is clear in his compositions and the ability to make rusted-out gas guzzlers and dripping Spanish moss look like art.

The film visits the types of town where each weekend the citizens must decide whether they’re going to spend Saturday night at the honky-tonk or Sunday morning in church. To understand the powerfully disparate pulls of those two paths may be impossible for outsiders. “If you come here looking for some sort of essential truth about the South or some spiritual revelation,” says White, “you’re not going to find it, unless it’s by accident ... or grace.” Nevertheless, “Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus” provides a fascinating glimpse into a startling subculture of angels and demons, while withholding judgment and letting the people and songs tell their own stories.

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Portions of this review appeared in The Times on June 24, 2004, when the “Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus” played at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

*

‘Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus’

MPAA rating: Unrated

Times guidelines: A little on-screen fire and brimstone never hurt anyone.

A Shadow Distribution release. Director-cinematographer Andrew Douglas. Producers Andrew Douglas, Martin Rosenbaum. Screenplay Steve Haisman. Editor Michael Elliot. Art director Clive Howard. Running time: 1 hour, 22 minutes.

Exclusively at Laemmle’s Fairfax Cinemas, 7907 Beverly Blvd., (323) 655-4010.