This may be controversial for a Generation Xer to admit, but I've never been a big Ralph Macchio fan.
Frankly, I've found his acting to be overly dramatic in every role I've ever seen him in, and I simply can't stand how he comes off as the same whiny, smart ass and a little dumb, teenager in every character he ever played.
That's the exact same role he plays in the 1986 Faustian drama he stars in with Joe Seneca and Jami Gertz called "Crossroads." And admittedly, I could have easily given into the temptation to back out of the movie a third of way through for just this reason ... Macchio's acting, but I was watching with Shelley. And it seemed a bit rude to call it quits because I don't like Ralph Macchio's acting. These are the deals we make when watching movies with our spouse, right?
The good news: I'm ecstatic I stuck with "Crossroads." And if you are a music lover, specifically a blues lover, this is a film you need to check out. I'd watch it again in a heartbeat! ... As a blues fan, I honestly can't believe that it took me 38 years to see this movie, and it only happened because Shelley stumbled upon it.
Full admission: The movie's core premise of the blues man "Willie Brown," played by Seneca, making a deal with the devil so that he could become a virtuoso on the harmonica, is an old literary trope. In fact, as old as the Johann Georg Faust character of the Middle Ages, a character who makes a deal with the devil -- his soul for unlimited worldly knowledge and worldly pleasures.
In the Faust story, Faust runs across the devil at a literal crossroads that serves as a symbolic crossroads for a life in which he has become bored. And so he turns to the devil whom he believes can improve his life through what this world can't offer.
Willie Brown does the same as a young man in "Crossroads," meeting the devil at an actual country crossroads in the deep South, where he makes his ill-fated pact that makes him a harmonica wizard. The twist in this movie is that young Eugene Martone, played by Macchio of course, and who is a 17-year-old guitar student at the famed Julliard School in New York City, comes along for the ride.
Martone develops a fascination with blues as a music student, which leads him to chase the mythical legend of blues unicorn Robert Johnson, who allegedly signed a pact with the devil to gain his fame. And there are also rumors about a mythical song that he wrote, but which there is no longer evidence that it ever existed. In Martone's investigation of Johnson, the arrogant and brass young music student learns of Brown, a living contemporary of Johnson, and who is now locked up in a minimum security facility for attempted murder (or maybe murder?).
Martone goes undercover as a janitor at the facility, meets Brown and eventually breaks him out to go on a road trip, promising to bring him back home. Unbeknownst to Martone, Brown has some unfinished business with the devil, which ultimately will bring the pair back to the same exact crossroads where Brown made his original deal with the devil. This sets up the ultimate final scene that involves a stellar guitar battle between Martone and another guitar slayer (played by actual guitar virtuoso Steve Vai!) that will get any music lovers motor running!
And what would any movie be without the love interest, right? Gertz plays "Frances," a young teenage runaway whom Martone and Brown come across and befriend on their journey. Of course she and Martone quickly become romantically entangled, but honestly, the relationship is unimportant to the movie, but understandable in Hollywood.
I won't ruin the movie any further; you just need to watch it.
You don't have to dig deep to uncover the literary symbolism in "Crossroads," which is a morality play that attempts to warn us off from the deals each of us makes with the devil when we feel our lives have hit roadblocks.
But, of course, we all do it, right? We believe that we can make deals with the devil to become more athletic looking, more youthful looking, thinner, wealthier, smarter, younger ... the list goes on and on. Each of us in our own way is Faust, and we want to escape the boredom and the ruts we inevitably fall into in this life.
But we also know that the pacts with the devil never turn out in our favor. Eventually, the devil's promises will evaporate into thin air like the lies that they are. And we'll find ourselves no better off than before the moment we signed the pact with the lord of the underworld.
There are no shortcuts in this earthly life, Faith Family. No short cuts to better health, a better body, a better bank account ... and on and on. There's only the hard work of being faithful and trusting in that our true value is being a beloved child of God. We don't have to be better blues players, better harmonica players, better writers, better singers, better business people ... on and on.
We just have to live into our Godly identities, and find our value there. ... Go watch "Crossroads." I don't think you'll be disappointed.
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