Movie Review - Bible Based: For Sale by Owner

This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.

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Plot Overview

University of Virginia preservation architect Will Custis (Scott Cooper) has purchased a historical fixer-upper on the James River, which turns out to be near the famous site of a vanished early settlement. He discovers a hidden mural depicting a man being burned at the stake, surrounded by six settlers. He calls in his mentor Clive Farrier (Tom Skerritt) and other big names to give the discovery credence, and they unearth skulls with teeth marks on them indicating cannibalism. The radio soon announces the mystery solved of the vanished colony, probably a sensationalism as one burning doth hardly make a colony.

happy hug award speech overwhelming
text handshake At an award ceremony an overworked Will experienced a fugue, causing worry to his fiancée—they're expecting a baby—Anna Farrier (Rachel Nichols) and his reluctant father-in-law-to-be Clive. Will seems agitated, has a headache, looks tired, and takes meds. He's undergoing therapy for his trouble yielding to authority; think Selby: “there are all forms of abuses of authority—police, politicians, unions, bankers, schools, prisons—and god knows how many others” (47). The movie leaves some doubt whether all Will's interactions are taking place in the real world. He read aloud to Anna the advert for the house, but she never saw it before she tossed the paper. Its current owner Ferlin Smith (Kris Kristofferson) was unknown to the only neighbor a TEXACO station owner whose brother left his car parked at the house when he went hunting causing Will to worry about someone bringing pesky paperwork. He does a handshake deal with Ferlin but then can't find the deed he was left with. Dr. Banks knows Ferlin to have died in an auto wreck some years back, but the wife of Sheriff O'Hare (Tom Bower) characterizes the doctor as being “crazy as a shithouse rat.” It's either a haunting—of which there are rumors—or a mental lapse. Will has dreams of an Indian uprising destroying the colony and spreading to modern life.

fishes The house is in the floodplain of the James River and the region is subject to sudden squalls. The movie's opening scene depicts a God's-eye view of what happened to the colony. A colonial woman is seen running for her life through the verdure, carrying her (stout) baby, looking back over her shoulder. There is no high ground to be found and the river is rising, so she stops to carve out her last words in a tree: CRO meaning cresting river overflows. A Powhatan Indian warrior uses his tomahawk to fashion an impromptu raft for them to escape on. Duh.

Ideology

A local Negro Gene Woodman (Frank Faison) signs on as Will's handyman fixing up the place, but we never see him interact with anyone else but Will, so he also might not be real. Both the sheriff and the fiancée are at the house with Gene working in the background, not being noticed by either of them. For that matter his idiosyncratic attire—tan head-to-toe with a red kerchief—is more appropriate to an icon than to a flesh-and-blood person. Further compounding the plot is their separate origins; while Will is First Family Virginian (FFV) his forbears having landed here from England, Gene for his aversion to working in a basement dark and confined, harks back to slave transport from Africa in the dank holds of sailing ships. Looking for a common ancestor we might have to go all the way back to Noah.

plowing For those not settled in the sands of time, I offer this remedial history lesson, with apologies to those who don't need it. The biblical story is widely known of Adam & Eve's temptation and fall in the Garden of Eden, how the woman ate the forbidden fruit and gave to her husband to eat (Gen. 3:6), God responding by increasing the severity of the woman's childbirth pains (Gen. 3:16) and making man's toil onerous (Gen. 3:17-19.) What is less well known—except in places like the Bible Belt—is a redo of sorts to ameliorate man's difficult labor. Noah's father Lamech had (Gen. 5:29) “called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed.” Or from novelist Jess Shelton: “There's a place in the Book tells on Lamech. He got him a boy called Noah and he says: This boy'll bring us comfort from our work and from the toil of our hands in the ground the Lord cursed” (126). They still had to follow the earlier template to get a reprieve. Instead of the forbidden tree to be respected by the first couple, there was old man Noah whose work break was to be respected by his three sons, (Gen. 6:10) “Shem, Ham, and Japheth.” They might be formed into two pairs: the eldest Japheth & Shem, and the youngest Ham paired with his own son Canaan making the numbers even. By way of analogy from a May Astor novel, we see “Walter Carewe & his enchanting Beatrice, who … bore him their three children: Virginia, Charles, born a year apart, … Elsie, two years younger. … Virginia and Charlie had been a unit within their family unit. Dad and Mum were a unit. Elsie was another unit, like a small soft bud attached to the Mum and Dad unit” (16–19). Noah fortified himself with wine before invoking blessings on his paired sons, as later would Isaac with savory venison before blessing Esau. The (red) yakut wine of Turkey for instance is a blend of four grapes—actually two pairs—so for illustration these numbers correspond.

Gene doesn't have a wife, only a girlfriend who has a boy seen walking to church with him, both dressed all in white. In the Genesis account of the Flood, is a mystery woman, the mother of Ham. (Gen. 9:18-19) “And the sons of Noah, that went forth of the ark, were Shem, and Ham, and Japheth: and Ham is the father of Canaan. These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.” Let's look again at Noah's story (Jasher 5:14-17):

(Jasher 5:14-17) And the Lord said unto Noah, Take unto thee a wife, and beget children, for I have seen thee righteous before me in this generation. And thou shalt raise up seed, and thy children with thee, in the midst of the earth; and Noah went and took a wife, and he chose Naamah the daughter of Enoch, and she was five hundred and eighty years old. And Noah was four hundred and ninety-eight years old, when he took Naamah for a wife. And Naamah conceived and bare a son, and he called his name Japheth, saying, God has enlarged me in the earth; and she conceived again and bare a son, and he called his name Shem, saying, God has made me a remnant, to raise up seed in the midst of the earth.

Shem and Japheth were full brothers, Ham was born at a later date (the youngest, see Gen. 9:24) perhaps from a different mother. Noah's wife was older than he was. Perhaps at 580+ years she was no longer able to bear children after the first two. She didn't have any more after the flood, even though it was a time to repopulate the earth. Maybe she stopped bearing before the flood. Ham could then have been stepbrother of the other two.

Researcher Mark DeWayne Combs posits that, “Although Jasher specifically references the births of Japheth and Shem, there is no such reference to the birth of Ham. … that Ham may have been much younger than his brothers and that he may have had a different mother” (389). Combs also observes, “Fathering a child, particularly a son, through a handmaiden or servant girl would not have been an uncommon or forbidden practice in that time period” (165). Historian Kenneth M. Stampp remarks, “Apologists for slavery traced the history of servitude back to the dawn of civilization and showed that it had always existed in some form until their own day” (14).

Come the deluge and the ark's passengers could well be a model for, (James 5:13) “Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms.” There was undoubtedly a lot of distress on their voyage occasioning a lot of prayer, and their eventual landfall would have been accompanied by much celebration. As ordained minister Tom Dooley points out, “Such a long period of ark living must have been quite tiresome. No doubt Noah's family was thankful for their safety and provisions; however, one could imagine them becoming restless, ready to get their feet on dry land again” (59).

When (Jasher 6:40–41) “they all went out from the ark, they went and returned every one to his way and to his place, and Noah and his sons dwelt in the land.” They'd been cooped up together long enough, so now they spread out somewhat according to some preestablished pecking order. God (Jasher 6:42) “said unto them, Be fruitful and fill all the earth; become strong.” To become strong meant, among other things, taking their needed meds when sick, along the lines of, (James 5:14) “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” Children are always getting sick. Here it seemed to be Canaan's turn whose elders would have been his father Ham and grandfather Noah. Oil in Bible times was a medication as when the good Samaritan (Luke 10:34) “bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine,” as also was wine per Paul's advice to Timothy to, (1Tim. 5:23) “Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities.” Grapes grow in the summer, but once they're fermented, the wine can be stored throughout the year. Noah got into the store while setting an example for a work break, establishing period(s) of escape from heavy work per Lamech's saying. As authoress Marie Kay once described something similar:

“To become happy,” my father and grandfather had often told each other, “to make one forget, yes. That's what wine is for, but never to get one drunk. That is only for derelicts, not for men.” ¶… My grandmother often said, “Merry, yes. Highly merry, well, once in a while. Drunk, never. That's … not for us.” (157–8)

Yet there is the matter of bonding, as in a Hartzell Spence novel:

“Aw, come on,” they said. “You don't really know a fellow until you get tight with him.”
My observation told me this was true. The inseparable friendships in our house were drinking companionships. The great men were drinkers. A man was not quite a comrade, no matter what his attainments, until he had been on a binge. Once he had come in well oiled late at night and the fraternity had greeted his bleary eyes the next noon at lunch with the raucous song of brotherhood, he was one of them. The difference was subtle but it was there.

Only recently one of the bashful boys, who had been treated casually by the fraternity had come in drunk. The next noon every face at the dining table beamed, and every throat burst out with song:

Here's to Herbie, tried and true,
He's a Phi Psi through and through. (333)

Noah's drunken incident humanized him as a proper flesh & blood man of long ago with an extraordinary achievement, not merely a pious religious figure. It was also the occasion to sort out his sons' destinies for many generations.

In vino veritas. Looking forward from that point it might rate a line from a Greg Bear novel: “Dicken reached into the shopping bag and produced a bottle of merlot. ‘Zoo security could bust us,’ he said, ‘but this is the least of our sins. Some of what needs to be said may only be said if we're properly drunk.’” (235)

By chance or design this exceptional indulgence interfered—it had to inconvenience someone—with Ham's youngest son Canaan's need, and Ham could well have been the low-status brother from another mother.

Instead of the wily serpent we had Noah's wife as an on-the-spot agent, who since she isn't mentioned, did well incurring no rebuke. She would have made herself scarce giving Noah some space to relax when he started drinking, and (1Tim. 2:9-10) “women adorn themselves … (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works.” Being a virtuous woman (Prov. 31:27) “She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” She would not have let grass grow under her feet but would have gone straight to visit Ham to make adjustments regarding their diminished store of medicinal alcohol, like the homespun heroine in an Andrew Taylor novel:

Mrs Arabella was a woman of decision. Having made up her mind to do something, she did not postpone it and did not permit half-measures. The inoculation of the household was arranged the following day and put into practice on the day after. (175)

Ham showed up shortly at Noah's tent to check out the cause. He fell to temptation by mocking his dad to his two brothers, but they would have none of it. This is parallel to Eve earlier failing first then offering the fruit to Adam who accepted it, but here the older brothers did not go along with Ham, so we'd expect them to receive a blessing rather than a curse such as it was. The distribution of labor had to be readjusted to account for the new workers' holiday(s), and Ham for his insolence left himself and his family line open to taking up the slack. Depicted below is that scene rendered in a Civil War vintage woodcut, made after a drawing by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (German painter, 1794–1872) from his archive, published in 1877.

The alternate image text by licensor iStock.com/Getty Images explains what happened here to Noah and his fermented grapes: “When he drank some of the wine, he got drunk and uncovered himself inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father's nakedness and told his two brothers who were outside. Shem and Japheth took a garment and placed it on their shoulders. Then they walked in backwards and covered up their father's nakedness. Their faces were turned the other way so they did not see their father's nakedness (Genesis 9:21-23).” They covered the old man to prevent him from catching a chill in the mountains as it was no longer summer. Ham's show of disrespect to their patriarch is like the treatment of a revered matriarch in a Seymour novel:

I don't think she'll be pleased to know that her picture is now a source of amusement throughout Naples. When she knows, and she soon will—it's inevitable—that her daughter … is in part responsible for her being photographed with bare thighs and most of her arse on display, I believe she'll feel resentful towards you. (131)

Ham had put himself in jeopardy according to, (Prov. 30:17) “The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.” Especially pertinent in this case is Noah's control over the animals including the raven (Gen. 8:7) and he is not unique, at least not in literature. Novelist Ted Bell writes of a chief inspector who “had been beaten to within an inch of his life and nearly pecked to death by countless killer ravens. All the while locked inside the cage of a Victorian aviary” (357). There is even biblical precedent for it when some youths mocked a man of God for not having a covering of hair on his head and they got mauled by beasts. (2Kings 2:23-24) “And … as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.”

eye trim There's a parity of eye loss and servitude given in (Exodus 21:26) “And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye's sake.” Ham and his line—represented by Canaan in his lineage—could be given servitude rather than mutilation. This would be in keeping with the sentiment of Job in, (Job 31:7-8) “If my step hath turned out of the way, and mine heart walked after mine eyes, and if any blot hath cleaved to mine hands; Then let me sow, and let another eat; yea, let my offspring be rooted out.” In that woodcut-derived picture above we see Ham after disregarding his mom's caution, checking up on his dad, getting carried away by an eyeful of the dishabille inebriate, and gesturing with his hands to his brothers. If he were to “sow, and another eat” and his “offspring be rooted out,” that would mean becoming a slave and his offspring being carried away in slavery. Perhaps Mrs. Noah persuaded (2Peter 2:5) “Noah a preacher of righteousness” to go easy on his son, as did a preacher's wife in a Jack Williamson novel:

“Down on your knees!” The preacher unbuckled his belt. “And beg the Lord's forgiveness—”

“Joseph!” His mother caught the preacher's arm. “For Jesus' sake, not today!” …

He never knelt. Before daylight next morning he took the preacher's wallet and the keys to the red Chevy pickup and drove west to try his luck in Las Vegas. Near Flagstaff, he ran off a curve and totalled the pickup. When the police brought him home, the preacher told them to take him on to the lockup where he belonged, but his mother begged till they agreed to drop the charges and send him to a military school. (22)

The Bible's account leans towards the military service option. (Gen. 9:24-27) “And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him. And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.” When Noah woke up, he blessed as a pair the lines of his two respectful sons and cursed Ham's line—pairing Ham with his youngest son Canaan as was Noah's wont to go by twos—giving them servitude to his other two sons'. (Jasher 73:35) “For the Lord our God gave Ham the son of Noah, and his children and all his seed, as slaves to the children of Shem and to the children of Japheth, and unto their seed after them for slaves, forever.”

Ham's youngest son Canaan is the particularly noted recipient of the punishment. Later when the Israelites invaded the promised land, the Canaanites were due for destruction, but the Gibeonite branch (the Hivites of Joshua 11:19 & Gen. 10:15-17) did a deal with Joshua who was the Jewish leader. They'd heard what happened to other Canaanite tribes, so they sent ambassadors dressed as if they'd come from a long journey (Joshua 9:3-6) and persuaded Joshua to make a league with this “distant” tribe. When it was discovered they'd tricked Joshua into sparing them, (Joshua 9:24-27) he made them bondmen, which was more to their liking. If this trick is indicative of the character of the original Canaan, he might well have been malingering to get out of his chores, which would also help explain Noah's hesitation to coddle him with wine. At any rate Noah deserved to relax with some of the wine store after his hard work.

The dynamic of hoarding is addressed in (James 5:4) “Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.” The God of rest would have the workers spend a portion of their earnings for fun and relaxation—they deserved it. The hoarder would fraudulently hold back that portion of their due, giving them bare sustenance. Curiously, the hoarder would have his skin blackened (James 5:3) as a witness against him.

More germane to modern times is perhaps the lineage of Cush, Ham's oldest son (Gen. 10:6), Cush meaning black in Hebrew, having settled in Africa, some of his to become in later years African slaves. Researcher Bodie Hodge confirms that, “As a general trend, Ham is the father of many peoples in Africa” (122). Dr. Ide adds, “Ham sired four sons: Cush (translates as ‘black’) … and Canaan the youngest” (62). A description of their lot might be got from a 1924 Thomas Shastid Novel noting:

“the tumult which I heard as I came toward the shore!”
“A caravan of slaves,” replied the bishop. “Gone now. Driven through the village like cattle, they are on their way to a larger place south. There a great ship awaits them. It will take them over to islands in the west—to labor, to sorrow, to die.”

“But I thought such things had been banished by law.”

“Here, as in Starlight, laws are often broken.” (160–1)

reindeer “Driven through the village like cattle” curiously touches on mutilation from birds as in a Thames Williamson account of a migration: “as they went crowds of birds hovered over them, hawks and ravens and gulls, all feeding upon the lemmings” (46) according to some hierarchy and pecking order. In fact he even writes of a kind of double jeopardy: “fawn still raw on the shoulder where that eagle tore it … A monstrous raven has slipped down and is clinging to the fawn with the torn shoulder, plucking savagely at the wound” (8). The carrion birds customarily go first for the eyes of a corpse, “already the eagles have been there, and have plucked out its eyes” (57).

Lincoln's face The Proverb has “ravens of the valley pick[ing] it out” and “the young eagles eat[ing] it.” That speaks of geographical separation, the valley being distant down low and the aerie way up high where the eagles nest. The mama eagle, of course, transports the plucked eye to her chicks. She would represent the ships of the transatlantic slave trade, the ravens would be the native African slave hunters, and the “young eagles” would be the end user slave owners, the last stop for these Negro slaves. The American Civil War was less than successful in liberating them as Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation applied only to the states in rebellion not to the Union ones under his authority. It would take Congress to do that through Constitutional amendment requiring ratification by three fourths of the states by such and such a deadline, which they could not obtain except by occupation of some temperamental states, in which case their vote under duress wouldn't count. This is discussed in my reviews of “News of the World”, “On the Basis of Sex”, and “X.” The Negroes' influence in America until the 1930's is briefly described by novelist George S. Schuyler:

When one-third of the population of the erstwhile Confederacy had consisted of the much-maligned Sons of Ham, the blacks had really been of economic, social and psychological value to the section. Not only had they done the dirty work and laid the foundation of its wealth, but they had served as a convenient red herring for the upper classes when the white proletariat grew restive under exploitation. The presence of the Negro as an under class had also made of Dixie a unique part of the United States. There, despite the trend to industrialization, life was a little different, a little pleasanter, a little softer. There was contrast and variety, which was rare in a nation where standardization had progressed to such an extent that a traveler didn't know what town he was in until someone informed him. The South had always been identified with the Negro, and vice versa, and its most pleasant memories treasured in song and story, were built around this pariah class.

The deep concern of the Southern Caucasians with chivalry, the protection of white womanhood, the exaggerated development of race pride and the studied arrogance of even the poorest half-starved white peon, were all due to the presence of the black man. Booted and starved by their industrial and agricultural feudal lords, the white masses derived their only satisfaction and happiness from the fact that they were the same color as their oppressors and consequently better than the mudsill blacks. (141–2)

In 1960 author Caskie Stinnett wrote, “Did you ever hear of the Freedman's Bureau? Well, it was set up right after the Civil War to help freed slaves get established. I'm not positive but I believe somewhere in this labyrinth of marble there's a small unit of the Freedman's Bureau still working away. I don't know what it does—maybe nothing. But it's there” (113). If Noah's pronouncement settled generational servitude on Ham's line, then Thomas Jefferson's Declaration graced the Negroes with unending bureaucratic emancipation.

Virginia didn't start out with slaves. Then when the farmers started raising labor-intensive tobacco, there weren't enough workers for hire, so they exploited a readily available source of conscripted labor from the Caribbean: the Barbados, Aruba and such places. People had to have their smokes, they demanded tobacco of the farmers, and this was the way to provide it. It was a labor requirement.

I was reading about Amish tobacco farmers. The Amish don't use modern technology but manual labor. A college student wanted to work on an Amish farm for a summer, but it was too difficult for him and he quit. One has to be born into that heavy work.

gardener Gene was built like an ox and was proficient with a variety of tools including a backhoe. He was seen using an electric drill. As an historical icon he nevertheless uses modern equipment. His girlfriend's pickaninny (Dexter Steven Morris Jr.) didn't contribute except to play practical jokes and commit vandalism. He seems to be part of Gene's retinue in some scenes and in others is unheard of, Gene making time-jumps from different points. The newspaper relates a pedestrian being killed in an auto wreck, but the loony doctor says he was a passenger who was killed in the crash. The Sheriff never sees Gene but somehow has a report of a missing boy. As a derivative icon, the kid would represent a later generation who is not inclined to help the Virginia whites but to make mischief. Last seen the black boy shows bloody signs of having been hoisted by his own petard, and he goes off his rocker. It's as if having rejected a servant role he receives the mutilation option, the moral arc of the universe bending towards justice.

Production Values

“” (2009) was directed by Robert J. Wilson. It was written by Scott Cooper. It stars Scott Cooper, Rachel Nichols and Kris Kristofferson. Supporting cast includes Tom Skerrit, Tom Bower, Joanna Cassidy, and Frankie Faison. Cooper was given the lead role of a tired, driven, medicated, egghead in love, a family's dead end. They would have had to pay big bucks for an actor who could pull that one off, and we couldn't expect if from an ordinary thespian. But he tried. The rest of them also gave it a good shot.

MPAA rated it PG–13 for some violent and disturbing images. The southern scenery was effectively captured, and the camera work was most excellent. The special effects stretched the limits of the editors who perhaps wished for fancier equipment. It was filmed on location in Louisiana, USA. Runtime is 1½ hours.

Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation

Here's one you definitely don't want to show on movie night in the insane ward. It tests the viewer's grasp on reality. It's a concoction of hauntings, exhaustion, memory flaws, historical fact (CRO), historical fiction (mural), and mental instability. That's not to mention the war of the states coloring the southerner's view of life. Lots of luck sorting it all out.

Movie Ratings

Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability For Children: Not Suitable for Children of Any Age. Special effects: Well done special effects. Video Occasion: Fit For a Friday Evening. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Three stars out of five.

Works Cited

Scripture quoted from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769, 1873. Print. Software.

The Book of Jasher. Translated from the Hebrew into English (1840). Photo lithographic reprint of exact edition published by J.H. Parry & Co., Salt Lake City: 1887. Muskogee, OK: Artisan Pub., 1988. Print, Web.

Combs, Mark DeWayne. End the Beginning. USA: Splinter in the Mind's Eye Pub., 2014. Print.

Hodge, Bodie. Tower of Babel: The Cultural History of Our Ancestors. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Pub., 2013. Print.

Ide, Arthur Frederick. Noah & the Ark: The Influence of Sex, Homophobia and Heterosexism in the Flood Story and its Writing. Las Colinas: Monument Press, 1992. Print.

Schuyler, George S. Black No More. Copyright, 1931, by The Macaulay Company. Reprint by College Park, Maryland: McGrath Publishing Company, 1969. Print.

Shastid M.D., LL.B. Sc.D. etc, Thomas Hall. Who Shall Command Thy Heart? Copyright 1924 in the United States of America by Thomas Hall Shastid. Publisher to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan: George Wahr, 1924. Print.

Spence, Hartzell. Get Thee Behind Me. Copyright, 1942, by Hartzell Spence. New York: Gosset & Dunlap Publishers. Print.

Stampp, Kenneth M., Professor of American History at the University of California (Berkeley).
The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. Vintage Books, 1955. Print.

Movie: For Sale by Owner

Bible Based Review