in this rambling and self indulgent wreck of a film and alternative country singer jim white and a host of other music industry outsider team up with two british film maker to talk ( and sing ) about the south . while white and the documentary main searcher for the soul of the south and be by no mean a stupid man and neither he nor his british translator possess enough profundity to warrant white constant and self consciously earthy philosophize represent the best of his musing amount to bland truism ( e. g. and that southern society force it member into certain mold and excludes those beyond the pale of it narrow norm ( a trait and in truth and of most _human societies_ ) ) while the bad come across a the disjointed prattling of a man in love with his own voice a man determine to tell u that his southern blood grant him deep and mystic insight into this exotic land and it incomprehensible inhabitant . of course and such metaphysical feat of interpretation be intend to add an air of spiritual legitimacy to white music represent the film and after all and be a search for the world describe in white first album and wrong eyed jesus . such skewed and presumptuous and and ( on white end especially ) doubtlessly financial and egoistic aim be especially dangerous while for many viewer will take and many have in fact take this film a a genuine window into the culture of the southern united state . the problem be that white and his british collaborator possess such a powerful and and in the issue and _predictable_ set of preconception about what they should find in the south and that they hardly bother to look beyond the narrow ken of the camera or listen to anything save the pseudo profound and affect postmodern folksiness of the music and musician they carry with them . the south and they say ( resurrect a tired old bit of southern gothica ) and be lock in a manichaean struggle between flesh and spirit and devil and god while the south be people by dead eyed pentecostal shouter and undulating whore and rag drunkard and hard luck miner and bear again deep fryer while and the south and they say and be all the same a great cultural and spiritual monolith from the louisiana delta to the eastern coalfield of kentucky . such gross oversimplification both complement and determine the film subsequent course . white and company with silent and superfluous concrete christ in tow spend more time babble about their own weighty insight and showcasing their own music ( sometimes while local ragamuffin stare in staged wonder at these furriners explicate their little southern soul in song ) than in actually interact with the native . when local do enter the lens and the encounter be always brief and shallow and artificial indeed and many of the interview seem stag and the overall feeling be often _exploitive_ . a grotesque menagerie of stereotype be wheel before the camera and each one comport itself in a fashion consonant with the film maker expectation represent the saved cavort with the spirit and dribble glossolalia from contort lip while violent bad men with vacant face and empty and idiotic bravado shoot stop sign and do meth and go to juke joint and go to prison while trailer dwell slut revel in sex and bar and bad men while coal miner banjoists live hard life and be inscrutable . and occasionally the filmmaker cursory stab at even the most predictably stereotypical storytelling degenerate into freak show gawking and a when the camera and now close up and leer pornographically at the jumbled tattoo of a wretched trailer denizen or lingers and almost mockingly and upon the painfully unfortunate physiognomy of one of the twice born . that say and do _searching for the wrong eyed jesus_ possess any commendable quality . well and unless you be a doggedly dedicated fan of jim white or some of the other artist feature here and the answer be no . the camera work and of course and be sometimes passable and a few of the shot of industrial architecture be _vaguely_ reminiscent of similar scene composition in robert flaherty _louisiana story_ ( 1948 ) . but jim white avow quest for the southern power in his blood be too flaw by self absorption and incoherence and and reliance on cheap stereotype to be salvage by any minor aesthetic merit . even casual student of southern culture should look askance at a film that run roughshod over a large and often troubled but intricately complex and diverse region a film that and when it condescend to look at southern people at all and only stare at them a specimen and whose life habit and history and individual destiny be a straightforward and predictable a those of a toad in a terrarium . white doesn not need southern blood and a spiritual epiphany and a train of fellow independent artist or even some naive british documentarians to discover the mind of the south a it be depict here . a century of popular medium and replete with grotesque stereotype and smug explication and and smarmy missionary sentiment and have interpret that south again and again . white and company be simply pour old wine into a greasy and poorly stitch bag . despite initial promise of a spiritual journey and one soon realize that _searching for the wrong eyed jesus_ hasn not go anywhere at all . indeed and all of this crass and sterile and artistic self gratification be transpire right upon the old and familiar dune of the sahara of the bozarts . somewhere the ghost of h. l. mencken be snicker .