Hale County This Morning, This Evening

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature last year, Hale County This Morning, This Evening is a different kind of documentary, sometimes radically so. Some think is the future of documentary, but I hope not.

The film, directed by RaMell Ross, has no linear story. It is a collage of images and sounds dealing with Hale County, Alabama, which seems to be a rural community and exclusively black. A few people are introduced, and the film roughly follows their lives, but aside from a baby dying there's nothing particularly compelling about any of what they do.

Daniel is hoping to become a basketball player, and we see him shooting hoops or having team meetings. Quincy and Boosie are a young couple with kids. I really don't know more than that about them. We see them do mundane things like go bowling or order at a fast food drive-thru.

I don't know what Ross found interesting about this place. Often we just see the view from a moving car. The film is alternately hypnotic and boring. Occasionally there will be an interesting image, as when he cuts from the drops of sweat falling from Daniel's body to raindrops falling. Ross is very adept at creating images, but without a story to follow I just couldn't get into this film.

I appreciate the experimental nature of Hale County This Morning, This Evening but it needed an interesting story.