Sounder

Here in Las Vegas, it was the day after the mass shooting. School was still open, but my fellow 6th grade English teacher suggested we not teach today, just show a movie, as the kids may be unsettled. Actually, I think my students were fairly unfazed. But what movie to show? Since we are reading Bud, Not Buddy, about a black boy during the 1930s. I thought of a movie I haven't seen in years, but is also about a black boy in 1930s America, and is rated G, Sounder.

Sounder was released in 1972, and was nominated for Best Picture, but it was the year of The Godfather. Stars Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson earned their only nominations, but the star of the film is Kevin Hooks, as David Lee, the son of a sharecropper who possesses above average intelligence and the desire to make something better of himself.

The setting is Louisiana, where Winfield and Tyson and their three children operate a farm for the town grocer. Life is hard--the opening scene shows Winfield and Hooks and their dog, Sounder, hunting for a raccoon. It's not for sport, it's for dinner, and when the raccoon eludes them Winfield is upset his family won't have meat. This upsets him enough that he purloins some meat from a local smokehouse, but is found out and arrested. Sounder, chasing the truck taking Winfield away, is shot by a deputy, and runs off in the woods.

Winfield is sentenced to a year of hard labor. The family, because Winfield is black, is not told where he is sent. A friendly white woman finds out and Hooks goes on a journey to find his father.

Sounder is a quietly moving family film. Today's kids might have too short an attention span to enjoy it, though my students seemed to tolerate it. The era's racism is subtle--most of it is expressed in that's just the way it is. The sheriff can't let Tyson see Winfield, because he's "just following orders." The family lives with it, but in a powerful speech, Winfield tells Hooks that he loves him but wants him to leave the farm, because he doesn't want his life to be mapped out for him. This is what the American dream used to be--one's children exceeded the success of their parents. This is not necessarily true anymore.