beyond the fact crazy people exist and there are religious nuts out there.
The characters basically make no sense most of the time.
The film has no real beginning, middle or ending, nor is anything ever explained much.
The film opens with a young man, with the unlikely name of Hazel Motes, apparently returning from a stint in the army.
He hitches a ride to a two story house that is in extreme disrepair, windows boarded over. He goes in the house, walks around and finally writes a note that he leaves there. This scene comes to nothing, and we learn nothing further about the house or its history.
It is never explained exactly whose house this is, or where the people have gone, but we are given the impression Hazel has probably lived there at one time.
Hazel decides to go to a city. Why - we don't know. Once he arrives in this city he writes down a name & address that he sees on a bathroom wall, and goes to visit this woman, who is a surprisingly fat hooker. He sees her for awhile and then he apparently isn't seeing her anymore. Like everything else in this movie, it comes to nothing and serves no purpose.
A young man named Enoch, tries to befriend him, but Hazel really isn't interested, although they keep crossing paths.
Enoch is about as crazy as you can get. One of his habits is to go to the zoo and stand in front of the cage where the chimps are and talk at them insultingly.
We never really know why Enoch behaves as he does, or why Hazel behaves as he does, beyond the fact Hazel had an overdose of old time scary, fundamentalist religion via his grandfather.
Enoch later becomes enthralled with a man who dresses in a gorilla suit, and manages to get the gorilla suit from him and then runs around in it.
Hazel, who is wound rather tight and seems to be in a constant borderline rage does a bit of street preaching. I got the impression he was trying to free himself from the untruths of the religion that had been drilled into him.
He has several encounters with a preacher and his daughter, although their interactions never really make any particular point, and there is no plot line.
Eventually Hazel succumbs to complete religious fervor and begins self-harming.
It is a very odd film. Interesting in it's oddness but other than that it has absolutely nothing going for it.
The cast does an outstanding job,but this film completely fails to deliver either a point of view or a storyline.
The film also has the characters tossing around the N word from time to time with no connection to the rest of the dialog.
2 stars