by Gabriella Apicella

The story of Jesco White is horrifyingly unbelievable. The bleakly uncomplicated beginnings of his drug addiction took place a mere six years after the beginning of his life, when he first began to “huff” lighter fluid, getting high from the fumes. This one simple desire to get high is frustratingly straightforward, free from more complex motivations like insecurity, shyness or peer pressure. Jesco White just liked that feeling, and that was that.

From that point on, it is impossible to untangle the man from the circumstances. Are the drugs to blame for his insane behaviour? Is it because he was so often the victim of violence that he became violent? Or is he just mad and bad? If he were a fictional character, reasons would surely be given – to add believability if nothing more, but in this case, the reasons are so riddled with the unknowable essential nature of Jesco White, they remain out of reach. All that can be done is to apathetically watch as his story unfolds.

With brutally beautiful cinematography by Tim Maurice-Jones the film transfixes, never glamorising or diluting the terrible images that make up this story, but actually sharpening them into nightmarish artworks. Edward Hogg’s performance is wildly uninhibited in a role that could easily descend into parody, but retains a raw sincerity and reality. Equally powerful is the performance given by Owen Campbell who portrays Jesco as a child, evoking memories of Thomas Turgoose’s portrayal in 2006’s “This is England”. As the love of Jesco’s life, Carrie Fisher shows off an easy ability to deliver a sensitive, nuanced and passionate performance of a character that in a less talented actor’s hands could be grotesque.

Not having heard of Jesco White until seeing the film, I’m fascinated to know that he is in fact still alive, and will certainly be tracking down the documentary “The Dancing Outlaw” that inspired first time feature film Director Dominic Murphy, and Screenwriter Shane Smith to make “White Lightnin’”. I was left incredulous at the film’s end after being battered by barbaric visions, hammered with a barrage of honky-tonk music, and pounded with contradictory religious messages. This is a wild film of a wild life. Born to a famous Mountain Dancer named D Ray White, Jesco followed his father’s wishes to take up the family talent and himself became locally renowned for dancing (Moutain Dancing is a type of North American folk dancing thought to be where tap dancing came from). His father had hoped that this inelegant foot shuffling would give his son’s life meaning, saving him from a life of addiction and ruin. Temporarily it did, but again and again Jesco exploded into violence, lunacy, and incomprehensible masochism. Part of me wonders if perhaps he’s actually a real-life warning against the dangers of drug and alcohol addiction, as the horrors of his life continue to become immortalised in song lyrics by artists ranging from Johnny Cash to metal groups Mastodon and Atomic Bitchwax.

If the obsession with finding a “reason” for why this man has done all that he has is irritatingly apparent, it comes only because of the frustrating lack within the man’s story. The 6-year-old Jesco White wants to get high in the same way most kids want chocolate, and demonstrates the same uncomplicated stubbornness that is impossible to argue with. I wanted to feel pity for him, I wanted there to be a way that he could be “saved”, and I wanted to understand why he would torture himself, but there are no explanations, and no reasons. This is a bleak and frightening portrait of a confoundingly simple man.

The film will be released in the UK on the 25th September 2009. For more information click here. It will also be out on DVD from September 28th, available at amazon.co.uk.