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I really liked the setting and atmosphere in Black Snake Moan. The small, rural southern town, the blues bar, the clothes of the characters, their diction, the pharmacy, the houses and their states of repair, the old radiator, all of the details, all of that felt authentic, but it didn't feel like an authentic blues movie. The film would have been way more true to the blues had the kid shot and killed Rae and Lazarus near the end. It would have made the ending superficially morose, but having both of them die at that point would have made Rae's transcendence even more powerful. Sure, she would be dead, but in the short moment shared in the song, Rae escapes the suffering caused by her past. The theme of redemption through music still would have been realized, and the abrupt cessation of her liberated state would have made it more powerful, in a 'Short Happy Life of Francis McComber' kind of way. An ending of that sort would also make the story relate better to the black and white clip of the old blues master explaining the blues and how it is all about love and the conflict of love between a man and a woman and how that conflict can make some folks crazy enough to kill. It would have spoken to the delusion of possessive love as when the guy shoots his woman and her supposed lover in a fit of blind rage. The actual ending was too tame, too perfect, too storybook Hollywood to be true to the blues.

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