RaMell Ross’ Hale County This Morning, This Evening both warrants enthusiasm for its directorial creativity, yet frequently allows this same unconventionality to bog down the proceedings.
The Oscar-nominated documentary laudably eschews talking-head interviews, re-enactments and the form’s other clichés, instead adopting the viewpoint of a casual observer, taking in the lives of impoverished African-Americans in the titular Alabama region.
In his commitment to chronicling average citizens barely getting by in rural America, Ross (perhaps unintentionally) echoes Margaret Byrne’s Raising Bertie (2017) and depicts numerous gut-wrenching overlaps with the residents of that film’s coastal North Carolina county and his neighbors just outside Tuscaloosa and Selma.
A patience-testing, multiminute scene of a child running from one side of a room to another, however, dilutes the work’s cumulative impact, and similar meandering stretches make viewers yearn for slightly more structure amid the filmmaker’s free-flowing style.
Now playing at Grail Moviehouse.
Before you comment
The comments section is here to provide a platform for civil dialogue on the issues we face together as a local community. Xpress is committed to offering this platform for all voices, but when the tone of the discussion gets nasty or strays off topic, we believe many people choose not to participate. Xpress editors are determined to moderate comments to ensure a constructive interchange is maintained. All comments judged not to be in keeping with the spirit of civil discourse will be removed and repeat violators will be banned. See here for our terms of service. Thank you for being part of this effort to promote respectful discussion.