Daughters of the Dust (1991, Julie Dash)

Daughters of the Dust is an epical story told lyrically. Set in 1902, the film tells the story about the time a specific Gullah family headed to the mainland and north into the twentieth century. It opens with Cheryl Lynn Bruce returning home to make the crossing, bringing along photographer Tommy Redmond Hicks to document the occasion. Bruce had left home, got some education, and became a Christian.

She’s very surprised to find her sister, played by Barbarao, also returning home. Bruce is the good sister who went off and assimilated into the popular culture. Barbarao is the scandalous sister, though it turns out she’s not the one who ought to feel scandalized. Barbarao’s bringing along female friend Trula Hoosier.

Despite the awkward situation (with the audience not having details, just the awkwardness), Bruce tries to make conversation. She remembers childhood details, which leads to Hicks mansplaining about the slave trade. The Gullah are descendants of African captives enslaved by plantation owners on the lower Atlantic. In 1902, it’s living memory, something Hicks doesn’t understand (yet). Barbarao and Hoosier laugh at Hicks’s naivete, and the rest of the water taxi ride is presumably much more quiet.

We don’t know because the action moves to the family’s day on Ibo Landing, named after the Ibo people, who figure into local mythology. Except, again, it turns out it’s living memory, which adds some devastating context to why people living in a tropical paradise (albeit with bad soil) would want to get the heck out. It also will lead to character development for Hicks and male “lead” Adisa Anderson. Quotations because, although Anderson gets quite a bit in the first act, he’s only the male lead because he’s the only male with a character arc.

The family—the Peazant family—is de facto matriarchal, led by Cora Lee Day, though granddaughter-in-law Kaycee Moore is making a power grab with the move north. Day’s not going, something none of her family seems to have really internally acknowledged. The film takes place over two days, with occasional flashbacks and a future-tense narration from Anderson’s (as yet) unborn daughter (Kai-Lynn Warren). Day also narrates a bit, starting before Warren, which provides some framework for how the narration will work in slipping through time.

Eventually, Warren will appear visually, the hope of the family—the first child to be born off the island—but also the child living inside this story she’s learned. It’s beautifully done. There’s nothing writer and director Dash attempts she doesn’t accomplish. The bigger the swing, the better the hit.

The film’s got several subplots, most supporting the main plot—the family leaving—through character development. Anderson’s miserable because someone raped his wife, Alva Rogers, and he’s worried she’s pregnant with another man’s child. It’s made him remote, angry, and violent, especially when Rogers won’t tell him who did it. Anderson goes to great-grandmother Day for advice but doesn’t listen when she gives it.

Rogers spends much of the film bonding with Barbarao and Hoosier, who are able to sympathize with her situation–finding just how much and why fuels Rogers’s character development arc, which becomes one of the film’s most consequential. But they’re all exceptional.

The best performance is Day. Despite being one of the two narrators (and the only one active onscreen)—and being very open in her narration—Daughters reveals more and more about Day as it progresses. Everyone orbits her, and Dash explores their different and similar trajectories. But Day has layered the performance so well, each new detail just informs a previous choice and sets up subsequent ones. It’s a singular performance, though the same can be said of a few more.

Barbarao, Moore, and Rogers are the other singular performances. Rogers is the last to go from simmer to boil, and when she does, it’s phenomenal and something it turns out the film’s been working towards the whole time.

Technically, the film’s sublime. Dash’s direction is deliberate and concise, honed both with the performances and composition. Color is crucial in Daughters, whether the blue ribbon on future child Warren or the indigo stains on the palms of the formerly enslaved family members, providing a visual reminder of generational differences and experiences.

Arthur Jafa’s succulent photography, toggling between tropical forests and white sand beaches, is simultaneously extraordinary and mundane. Similarly, John Barnes’s score inhabits the scenes, modern for the audience’s ears, while providing an emotional gateway into the characters’ lives, even as Dash waits to reveal various details.

Then there’s Joseph Burton and Amy Carey’s editing. Their cutting makes it all happen. Dash and her editors use slow motion to great effect, focusing and guiding the audience’s attention.

Great production and costume design—Kerry Marshall and Arline Burks Gant, respectively.

Daughters of the Dust is a marvel. Dash, her cast, her crew all do superlative work.

Killer of Sheep (1978, Charles Burnett)

Killer of Sheep is a series of vignettes, usually connected with a sequence at the slaughterhouse (though not always slaughter, but sometimes, so be ready), always connected with a piece of music. Sometimes the music recalls a previous scene or musical selection, creating a narrative echo between the sequences. And even though Sheep is incredibly lyrical in its structure, somewhere in the second half—as enough time has progressed—more traditional plot lines have formed.

Mainly because lead Henry G. Sanders has started hanging out with Eugene Cherry and Cherry really wants to get a car running. Except Cherry’s terrible at bigger-picture car stuff. He can install an engine block but is hazy when it comes to gravity, leading to a couple harrowing sequences.

And then Kaycee Moore has a definite subplot; she plays Sanders’s wife, who’s feeling his depressive episodes in all sorts of ways. Sheep is about being Black working class in the early seventies, with L.A. in some kind of a transition (the neighborhood kids play in unfinished buildings, constructions or destructions), and writer, director, editor, and cinematographer Burnett knows there’s a lot there for a Black woman. But Sheep doesn’t explore it, just how Moore (and the other Black women) experience being around the men.

The setting and time period mean there’s no way Sanders can call what he’s experiencing depression, but he does know there’s nothing he can do about it. He and Moore have somewhat recently moved to the city with their two kids. Jack Drummond plays the tween son, Angela Burnett’s his little sister.

At the open, it seems like Drummond will be the more significant kid. Burnett juxtaposes Sanders’s story with scenes of the neighborhood kids at play. Mostly the boys, though the girls get a memorable scene, so it seems natural Drummond’s going to be the more important. He’s ingesting a lot of toxic masculinity, both out playing and (passively) from dad Sanders, and he’s started bullying sister Burnett.

But since he’s always out of the house and Burnett’s too young to go out on her own—we eventually see she does have friends, but they come over with their mothers—she’s much more present for Sanders and Moore’s unhappy moments together, but also their time apart. Moore and Burnett have a gentle mother-and-daughter arc; lots of lovely moments.

While Moore and Cherry have plot lines and identifiable arcs, Sanders sort of doesn’t. Yes, he’s the main character, yes, it’s about his work contributing to his depression, but if Sanders’s character knows how to verbalize any of those feelings, he doesn’t on screen. And what we do see on screen suggests he doesn’t. Again, he’s trapped in a depression, knowing there’s no way out. Even when he gets exceptionally asterisked job offers—one’s to be a cabana boy for the liquor store lady, the other’s to be wheelman on a hit—we don’t get his reaction. The liquor store scene ends emphasizing the awkwardness and awfulness of the situation (the owner only cashes checks for the Black men she’s got the hots for, i.e., Sanders), and Moore’s the one who shuts down the wheelman conversation.

With his male friends, Sanders can find a comfort he can’t with Moore, which even the kids recognize (though Drummond’s acting out from go). Moore’s trying everything she can with Sanders, but he just doesn’t talk to her. There are some devastating scenes for the two of them. While Sanders gives the film’s best performance, Moore gives the most essential. Sheep simply wouldn’t work without her anxious but muted energy. She’s primed in anticipation, but Sanders is utterly resigned. Burnett mixes the contrary tones beautifully.

Burnett’s most impressive work on the film—well, technically, it’s producer because he made the film—but creatively, it’s his direction and editing. His photography’s excellent, and the writing’s strong, especially for a mostly amateur cast. But the direction is where he’s superlative, whether with the actors (again, the editing and writing working in unison) or with his composition; Sheep’s always phenomenal. The way Burnett bakes looming danger into a film without any violence (against people, anyway) is something else.

And it relates back to the character relationships. There’s a lot of turmoil between Sanders and Drummond, Sanders and Moore, and Moore and Drummond. Their interactions are sometimes foreboding, especially given Drummond’s seeming lack of, well, sense. Things aren’t going right for the family in Sheep, but only Drummond is actively threatening to make them worse. It’s rending.

Thanks to the montage device, Burnett’s able to end Sheep whenever and goes out not so much on a surprise, but still abruptly. The third act’s got a nebulous start time until the film’s end when events become a little clearer. It’s bleak but not fatalistic. There’s always a lot of hope, even as Sanders is drowning in hopelessness.

Sheep’s an exceptional film.