Very disappointed :(

Excellent, a Must See

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

As a response to others: Places like this do exist. When you talk about how rare they are and refer to them as "armpits" you are only expressing your ignorance. This movie is not trying to convey the South. It is this small town southern culture that you are oblivious to that they are trying to show and they do so effectively.Firstly, the cinematography is hair raisingly beautiful. The color used almost looks Hollywood in style. The grays greens and browns are bleak and beautiful. Secondly the characters are excellently picked. Jim is a little stiff but is sincere enough that he is believable. His cowboy philosophy gets to be a little much at times but slows down towards the end of the film. The music throughout just adds to the story and also slows down in the second half. I really don't want to talk about too much just watch and be taken into a world that you may not be familiar with (even if you live in the same region).

Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus takes the outsider on a beautiful lyrical esoteric journey through a part of the South that most of us have never seen. In that sense, it is eye-opening. However, its Cinema Verite approach lacks context and leaves the outsider to understand that are being presenting with something truly central about the essence of the modern "South" when in reality they are only seeing a highly-selective isolated and fading subculture of the poor, rural, white, poorly-educated, mostly Pentecostal world of a few small Southern towns. By only presenting this small piece of the South, the director seems to reinforce, probably unintentionally, the negative stereotypes of Southerners as "hicks" that too many outsiders unfortunately already hold. As someone who has lived in more urban parts of Virginia and Texas for the last 26 years, I find this selective picture of the "South" to be very off-putting and incomplete. The outsider is not given the context to understand the true complexity of the American South. Most Southerners live in urban and suburban areas. The importance of African-Americans to southern culture is sadly not shown. Most Southerners are not Pentecostals speaking in tongues. Most Southerners are better educated and more sophisticated than those shown in this film. The South is an increasingly multi-cultural region as well. Nor does this picture provide the viewer with any sort of analysis or economic understanding of why this part of the rural South has been left behind. Rather than presenting the heart of the South as the film implicitly claims, it shows the margins of the modern South. That's fine and important, but without more context it risks doing a disservice to the world it is trying present fairly. The viewer would be better served by a fuller accounting of today's south and an explanation of why these people shown have been marginalized.

This beautifully photographed film, a patterned and composed documentary, is a little like D'Toqueville. A couple of British filmmakers, taken with American roots music like so many of their brethren, lay out a map of the southern subconscious with the help of some singer songwriters, Pentecostals and Jesus.This is an evocative, elusive and still elucidative work that helped me understand and accept what had been the dark flip-side of my America. They lead us on a journey, wide-eyed and tinged with love, into the prisons, honky tonks and churches, where the stories this music tells are born.

Though I have ventured through the American South on a few occasions, it has always remained to me a deeply mysterious place. This superbly photographed documentary shed some light and dispelled some long-standing myths for me.For example, I had formerly believed that the South was a land still deeply divided along colour lines. I see now that that's impossible -- there are no black people in the South! So how could racism possibly rear it's ugly head? It can't! Yes, friends, the truth about the South is that it is a land full to bursting of friendly but misunderstood white folks, who may not have much formal education, but are endless fonts of homespun wisdom, tattoo their bodies with all their regrets and can even quote Goethe.I highly recommend this film. If Diane Arbus had decided to use her talent for bad rather than good and then went out to make a film, then Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus is exactly the film she would have made!