Delayed Reaction: Daughters of the Dust

The Pitch: A different kind of movie about the African American experience.

On an isolated island on the east coat, a black family prepares for their move to the North.

I'll be honest, thanks to my insane amount of Oscar prep*, I didn't get to this Reaction as quickly as I should've, given the density of the film.  I had a tenuous grasp on the movie right after I saw it, a lot of which has now escaped me.

*Here's another reminder that I post these a while after I actually see the movie and write the Reaction.

This is a unique film. It's about a black community in America that, thanks to the  isolation on St. Simons Island off the coast of Georgia, held onto a great deal of their African traditions, which creolized over several generations. The film is set in 1902, distant enough from slavery that only the oldest generation experienced it, while the younger generation navigates how much they want to integrate into American culture. The cadence and vocabulary of the dialogue is strange and sometimes hard to follow. The film is more about tone than story. This was added to the National Film Registry back in 2004, which makes me think whoever oversees that is doing a good job. This is far from my favorite movie, but it's the kind of thing you'd hope to see preserved since it's so unlike other films. That said, I struggled to stay on the same wavelength as the film. It's in the familiar category of "films that would benefit greatly from a rewatch but I didn't like it enough the first time to warrant a rewatch".

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend