“Hale County”– Movie Review

On the closing weekend of The New Directors/New Films Festival, I attended the New York Premiere of the documentary, “Hale County This Morning, This Evening”. 

Synopsis

A documentary that follows the day to day activities in the lives of members of the Hale County, Alabama community.

Story

Hale County, Alabama is not the place where you’ll find the 1%; it has long been a town where poverty has reigned.  Over the decades, however, the demographics have changed; where it once housed white sharecroppers from the Dust Bowl era of The Great Depression, it is now home to African Americans who see little hope for a better tomorrow.  Instead, they just seek to find a way to survive day-to-day – which is no easy task.  The lack of opportunity for both the children and adults seems to be what dooms them to a future similar to their present.

RaMell Ross was living in Washington, D.C. when he had a job offer to move to Hale County where he would teach photography and help coach basketball.  Upon moving there, he found that he fell in love with the people and the place and instead of making this a short-term opportunity, he decided to settle there.  Inspired by the resiliency of Hale County’s citizens in the face of great adversity, he then decided to record their lives as they struggled to make a go of things.  Whether observing a basketball practice or watching children play with fireworks in an empty lot, he shot whatever he stumbled upon. 

Ross follows the story of one couple who, despite being of modest means, decides to have children.  After their first child, Boosie later becomes pregnant with twins; she has a boy and a girl.  Tragedy strikes when the boy succumbs to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, leaving the couple now with only two children.  In the stiflingly humid summer heat, there isn’t much in the way of entertainment for many children but to spend evenings outside hoping for either a soothing breeze or a rain to cool things down.  In Hale County, the citizens become accustomed to living in invisibility.   

Review

For those who seek a standard narrative structure in a documentary, “Hale County, This Morning, This Evening” will not be your movie.  That is because this documentary has none – the structure is as flat as a pancake.  Whether or not that is a good thing or a bad thing will depend on the degree to which you respond to director RaMell Ross’ unique visual style.  There is no doubt about the fact that he has done something quite different in terms of not only his shot choices and composition, but also the fact that he’ll choose to linger on a particular shot merely because he finds it interesting. 

There is no doubt about the fact that Ross is quite courageous – some might even say audacious – to attempt something quite so daring in your first feature film.  However, there is also the extremely valid question of whether or not it works.  One can look at pretty pictures for only so long before it feels as though you’re merely watching someone’s home movie rather than a documentary.  We have to get an understanding of whose story we’re watching, why it’s being presented to us and for what reason should the audience have an emotional investment.  While this is not an argument to contrive a story that doesn’t exist (a sin of some documentarians), all filmmakers must be capable of telling a story coherently.

Following the screening, director RaMell Ross was interviewed.  The full title of the film, “Hale County, This Morning, This Evening”, was a nod to writer James Baldwin’s short story, “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon”.  Ross said that he shot the movie over a five year period, recording over 1300 hours of footage.  He found it to be a bit of a challenge to raise money for this movie because investors didn’t like the fact that there was no story.  Instead, Ross believed in the documentary’s ability to show beauty in the mundane – a “rambling beauty”, as he characterized the content.