I’ve seen Ganja & Hess three times, and I still feel like I’m eons away from completely understanding and appreciating how truly great and beautiful it is. I need an art history expert to analyze every single frame of Ganja & Hess, write an explanation and/or give a lecture about the significance of the film. Bill Gunn, the filmmaker who also plays a brief role in the early part of the film, wanted to make a film about addiction, but there was only money to make a black vampire film to exploit the success of Blacula so he took the money and did what he wanted, which displeased and led it to be recut and butchered by studios. Since then, the original production team reassembled the film to reflect the director’s original cut.
The first time that I saw Ganja & Hess, I didn’t like it much because I knew that I didn’t get it. I decided to watch it a second time before watching Spike Lee’s dreadfully misguided remake. These aren’t your traditional vampires, and the story is told in a very surreal fashion. Like all vampires, they are extremely difficult to kill and addicted to blood, but it makes sense that African vampires would not be vulnerable to sun otherwise the story would be quite short.
If you decide to watch Ganja & Hess, you need to really pay attention while the opening credits are rolling. The dialogue intentionally does not match what is visually unfolding on screen to mirror the disorientation of the characters’ psyche. Listen to the two songs in the opening, which tells the entire story. Unfortunately there is no closed captioning so you may need to replay some scenes several times or rewatch the movie after watching it once. After my second viewing, I watched it again with commentary. Realize that the initial church scene actually occurs at the end of the main character’s story, but is used to frame what happens in the beginning-a flash forward before any of us saw Lost. The beginning of the film is told from an extremely tertiary character’s perspective, which is then abandoned for the majority of the film. Then the story is told linearly, but is heavy in imagery, symbolic art history references that dissolve into scenes in the movie or are placed adjacent to characters to reveal more about the character than any dialogue could. The soundtrack is also deeply symbolic and worthy of its own thesis.
Ganja & Hess is about Dr. Hess Green, played by Duane Jones of Night of the Living Dead fame. Dr. Green is a wealthy, remote, cold, well-established academic, who is investigating the fictional Myrthian, an ancient African nation of blood drinkers. He hires and invites his new assistant, George Meda, who is played by the filmmaker, to stay with him in his lavish home. Unfortunately Meda is mad. The opening titles and narration already tells the viewers what will happen between the two. Did Dr. Green become addicted to blood before he became infected because of his interest in Myrthians? If you watch the film closely, the Myrthian Queen beckons to Dr. Green hauntingly before he becomes infected. Was Meda always mad or did his interest and contact with the Myrthians cause or exacerbate that madness? After Dr. Green becomes infected, he finds himself in situations that he would have never even driven near in the past.
Soon Meda’s wife, the impertinent and gorgeous Ganja, demands that Dr. Hess provide her with a place to stay until she can track down her husband. Ganja ignites an emotional response and need hithertofore unseen in Hess. They become lovers, and Ganja ruthlessly lays her claim to Hess’ world, but Hess’ world is ultimately one of death and is unmoored from the basic universal morality of the world. Hess tires of his existence until he finds the key to the Myrthians’ salvation in one of the Myrthians’ prophetic texts: stand in the shadow of the implement wielded by forces dangerous to love and that destroyed a good God because nothing can survive in its shadow. Once you stand in this shadow, you will return to the bosom of your creator.
If you want to watch a straightforward vampire film, Ganja & Hess is not for you. If you hate artsy fartsy films, Ganja & Hess is not for you. If you are comfortable with experimental, abstract or deeply symbolic texts, then give Ganja & Hess a chance. Ganja & Hess has nudity, sex and violence, but duh, it is a vampire movie. For me, Ganja & Hess is a movie about people’s misguided efforts to find answers/truth, a home or a place where they belong and end up destroying what they value and themselves instead of appreciating what they already had before that journey.