HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING: FILM REVIEW
CW: SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME
Watching the billowing smoke of burning tires, director RaMell Ross is approached by a man who’d seen the flames from afar. Concerned, the man asks what he is doing. Ross responds that he is recording the fire. “Making it look like the house is on fire?” the man challenges. Ross continues, “Nah, but it’s like, when the smoke comes up and the light comes through it [...] like, how often do you see that?” The man is listening now. Maybe, beginning to understand. “When the smoke gets the sun right behind it. You see, like, the daggers that are coming in.”
RaMell Ross leans heavily into visuals in his directing of Academy award nominated documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening. He focuses on the shape of people’s hands and the movement of a treadmill — looking for beauty in the way things naturally are. After seeing the film displayed in the International Center of Photography (ICP) in Manhattan as a part of the “But Still, It Turns” exhibit alongside Ross’s photography, I was entranced by these hypnotically mundane visuals. Ross is a visual artist specializing in filmmaking, photography, and writing, and whose feature documentary, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, won an award at Sundance Film Festival in 2018. The film explores the lives of those living in Hale County, Alabama, the center of America’s Black Belt. The Black Belt is a fertile stretch of land along Alabama and Mississippi and one of America’s most prominent agricultural areas prior to the Civil War. The film mainly focuses on the lives of Daniel Collins, a teenage basketball player, and Quincy Bryant, a father, over the course of five years.
The element of prolonged time is one of the many most interesting aspects of Hale County This Morning, This Evening. Because the film is a documentary, knowing that these people and their experiences exist is impactful to the audience in ways different than, say, the fictional Boyhood (2014), a coming-of-age film filmed over the course of twelve years featuring the same actors during this time. Over the course of the documentary, Collins undergoes the college acceptance process, tries out for Selma University’s basketball team, and begins his journey as a college athlete. For Bryant, he raises his firstborn son, Kyrie, supports his girlfriend through her pregnancy with twins, and suffers the sudden death of his newborn son, Korbyn, due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
Just as in life, Ross portrays Korbyn’s death as sudden, almost unexplained. The silent shift in tone is prominent. Following Korbyn’s death, there is a scene of his mother hunched over, Bryant calling for Kyrie to stay away from her. There is a hauntingly emotional church scene in which churchgoers dance, thrash, and cry to a gospel song. There is a moment in which Bryant’s girlfriend reminisces on Korbyn’s life while holding his twin sister, Karmyn. The mother tells a story of Korbyn crying for her to hold him. Time can change many things quietly, and in this case, this effect was clear in the second half of the movie.
Silence is an important word here, as it is another aspect of the film that Ross utilizes to its full effect. Many of the vignettes of black life in the documentary are silent, with little to no sound save for background noise, some discussion, or music. There are only a few interviews with the subjects, and a couple times during which Ross is spoken to directly. I think this is a significant step toward the film’s intentions. Through Hale County This Morning, This Evening, the audience is able to experience the mundane in the most authentic way. Further, they are able to experience the everyday lives of southern black Americans and hear their thoughts about life and future directly from them. According to Cinema Guild, the film portrays the collective image that is combined with America’s visual imagination of black life. I certainly agree. While the film followed two individual people and their friends and families, the scenes that Ross chose to broadcast in the hour and sixteen minute film were universal and relatable, resulting in a stronger heartache when one imagines the experiences of the film being felt personally.
Hale County This Morning, This Evening is a film that is an honor to witness, whether it be in the ICP beside Ross’s photography or on its own. One does not expect to be so moved by such everyday scenes, but the true to life depiction of black life that Ross achieves in his directing is breathtaking nevertheless. The film is deeply powerful, visually captivating, and beautifully mesmerizing. It is clear from Ross’s photography that he has the artist’s eye, and his application of this to filmmaking is absolutely astounding.