Terence Davies' The Neon Bible is a lyrical and transcendent coming of age story, a film which provides a heartbreaking examination of religious oppression and sociocultural collectivism in small-town America, detailing the exploits of David, a young, teenage boy, who reflects on his early years, his abusive father, his suppressed mother, and his flamboyant aunt, Mae, who served as a shield for young David against his troubled surroundings. Reflective in nature, The Neon Bible looks at the restrictive, old-fashioned culture steeped heavily in misogyny through the lens of a small young boy, detailing the oppressive forces of Evangelical Christianity, which both psychological and often physical plague his mother, a woman who is effectively trapped under the collective's perspective of right and wrong. While David's mother falls down a death spiral of abuse, depression, and forced-servitude, Aunt Mae does her best to protect the young boy from witnessing this unfair treatment, a flamboyant character and lover of the arts who views performance as her means for escape. Like most of Davies' films, The Neon Bible's lens for the viewer is the memories of its main protagonist, with young David rarely witnessing direct abuse, confined to experiencing the aftermath of such pain and oppression, one in which his own mother slowly drifts into what one could define as borderline psychosis. Aunt Mae shields young David from witnessing much of the abuses of this culture, with her flamboyant demeanor and care-free nature distracting David from the true horrors of the world which he inhabits. Played beautifully by Gena Rowlands, Aunt Mae is a character of such quiet pain, a woman with no alternatives but to run from such rampant misogyny and collectivism, with her affinity for the stage being rooted in the fact that it's the one place in which she can feel important, free, and alive. She is a tough character, who who has been used and abused by a system that essentially views woman as secondary to men, masking her own pain for the sake of young David who is far too young to understand the magnitude of his mother's abuse. As the film progresses, one begins to realize that Aunt Mae's own cockiness, her general flamboyant demeanor, are a biproduct of her environment, with her care-free nature being the only way in which she has been able to remain sane in such an oppressive culture. While The Neon Bible's critique of evangelical Christianity is biting and important, I'd argue the film's real triumph is how it exhibits the flaws of collectivism, with the small-town christian community being steeped into collectivist thought. Jack's mother is a character who is slowly grinded down by the collective beliefs that plague the small town, with The Neon Bible painting a portrait of a society in which everyone thinks the exact same and individual thought is looked down upon, viewed as a nuisance to god and the common good. It's through this collective ideal that society knows what is best for everyone that Jack is forced into adulthood, striking down a man of the cloth who "wants to help his mother", unwilling to see his mother's individualism crushed under the weight of collective any longer. The visual acumen of Terence Davies is almost singular, and The Neon Bible is no exception, being another cinematic achievement that is best described a visual poetry, with Davies slow crawling camera capturing the ethos of this story, a young man reflecting on his childhood and the path life has led him down at this point. Heartfelt, compelling, intelligent, and artistically crafted in every way, Terrence Davies' The Neon Bible may not quite stand up to his earlier works, but it's without question another impressive film from the great English filmmaker.
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June 2023
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