Holy Shit (Paper Moon (more)))

The detail!:

 Opening scene, graveside.

Rock of Ages hymn:

...let the water and the blood,
from thy wounded side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure;
save from wrath and make me pure. 

 Minister's graveside sermon:

''I will wash mine hands in innocency."

As they walk away from the grave of Addie's mother, the minister says, "Addie, do you want some water?" "Let's get the child some water." This scene lasts 57 seconds.

There happens to be an old pump water fountain in the graveyard. The minister pumps some water into a tin cup for Addie.

They gather round the fountain in a semi-circle and convince Moze to take Addie with him and drop her off in Saint Joseph, Missouri.

foul, I to the fountain fly;
wash me, Savior, or I die.

This scene is a gathering at a baptismal font, to wash sin from Addie and make her "pure." 

The minister hands Addie the water in the tin cup.

 

 But Addie will not be purified. She pours the water out onto the ground.

 

 The pump cleaves the group in two. The pump also bisects Moze.

I didn't notice Addie pouring the water away on previous views. There is a lot going on, simultaneously, in this film. In foreground and background, in spoken dialogue and in song lyrics, in settings and in settings within settings. There are three sources of information for the audience in Paper Moon, the first two common to all films, what our eyes see, what our ears hear from the dialogue, and what the song lyrics, and here, the minister's sermon recitation, tell us, oftentimes, subliminally. Those three sources of info are intended to be complementary but because we have difficulty multi-tasking sensory input, one or more gets lost on us. I figuratively plugged my ears and used only my eyes.

I saw something else, which I'll get to separately, before this scene, and decided to watch the film from the beginning with the sound and captions off.