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Jan Stuart

July 13, 2005

SEARCHING FOR THE WRONG-EYED JESUS (unrated). "The South is more than a state of mind, it's an atmosphere," says Jim White, the country-crooning cicerone who leads us on a music-laced tour of the bars, bayous and backyards of his native deep South. The atmosphere that Andrew Douglas' documentary captures so poetically is checkered with rocking Pentecostal churches and abandoned school buses, but you won't encounter any of the smirking condescension that Robert Altman brought to such imagery in his satirical classic "Nashville." Douglas and White roam from Louisiana to Virginia in a beat-up '70 Chevy, eliciting stories and sound bites from prisoners and plain folk that revel in nuggets of violence and sin and seem ripped from the pages of yesterday's police blotter. It's an either-or land: Either you go to church, or you wind up in jail. The polarities are embodied in the likes of Myrtle Lester, an ancient radio evangelist with a face like melted wax, or Johnny Dowd, a lazily off-key singer who croaks tender odes to murder and thieving. There is a lot of music sung in barbershops and diners by some of the best local musicians, and most of it is quite lovely. 1:22

(language, violent and sexual discussion). At IFC Theater, Sixth Avenue and Fourth Street, Manhattan.