The characters in Chrystal are just so damaged from life's misfortunes. Wondering through a haze of disappointment and lost love, Chystal (Lisa Blount) and her estranged husband Joe (Billy Bob Thornton) are trying to reconnect when Joe returns after serving a twenty-year prison sentence.
Before his conviction, Joe was involved in a car wreck while being pursued by the authorities for smuggling drugs. Though he survived, Chrystal (Lisa Blount) suffered permanent back injuries and the couple's young son was killed.
Chrystal now lives on her farm in the wilds of the Arkansas Ozarks, a kind of semi-recluse, occasionally visited by her garrulous mother, (Grace Zabriskie) and with only her pet dog to keep her company. When Joe finally turns up unannounced, very little is said between them. The ghosts of the past and the spirit of their child, whom Chrystal sees as a vision in the forest, continue to haunt them both.
As the submissive, and guarded Joe quietly takes up residence on the porch with the dog and begins doing odd jobs around the property, Chrystal, who moves slowly and stiffly due to pain from the old accident, watches him and slips him food outside. Slowly, however, the couple begins to speak.
Although Chrystal tells him that, "You poison everything you touch," she has always loved Joe. However, she's been paralyzed, not only physically, but also emotionally by the accident that occurred so long ago. For his part, Joe, putting his welding skills to use, creating an enormous free-form metal sculpture in the yard, just wants his wife to tell him what to do.
Drugs eventually rear their ugly head when a local marijuana grower Snake (a very slimy Ray McKinnon), starts to lord in over Joe. Snake makes it clear that any weed growing must be done with his permission and he even pressures Joe to grow marijuana for him on his property. After a big and oddly fought public fistfight, it's clear nothing good can result between these two.
While the clash between Snake and Joe, and Joe's attempts to reconnect with Chrystal, provide much of the dramatic arc of the film, there's also a rather extraneous subplot involving a visit to the area by a blind musicologist, Kalid (Harry Lennix), who's writing a book on mountain music and wants to track down local legend and mountain music avatar Pa Da (Harry Dean Stanton).
Chrystal's own singing so impresses Kalid that he photographs her with the promise that he will write about her in his book. There's a tentative emotional connection between Kalid and Chrystal, and their relationship could go further were it not for Chrystal's lingering issues with Joe.
There's no doubt that Chrystal is a well intentioned, earnest, and beautifully made film. However, the proceedings unfold at a virtual glacial pace, despite the periodic bursts of violence. Consequently, rather than dramatizing the story, the producers have almost succeeded in entombing it, much as Chrystal's farm is entombed in the mountains.
Director Ray McKinnon is obviously trying to imbue the story with mythical like elements - we have a part backwoods melodrama, part symbol-laden tragedy, and part druggie/crime drama. It's a worthy effort, but it doesn't really come off that well, particularly when McKinnon handles everything so ploddingly.
The result comes off more like a Southern Gothic funeral, a zombie trash-fest, rather than a serious treatment of the themes of loss, guilt, redemption, and moral repayment. The acting is generally good with Blount particularly memorable as Chrystal, her mix of vulnerability and emotional instability make her the most heart-felt of all the characters. But her resolute steadfastness makes the character a bit monotonous after about an hour.
Overall, Chrystal has periodic moments of compelling drama, but the pacing is often so labored that the film ends up coming across as extremely hard going. Designed to appeal mostly to Southern viewers, the film just lacks the radiance it so obviously aspires to, and will probably end up finding a nice home on late night cable. Mike Leonard September 05.
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