Hale County This Morning This Evening: NZIFF Review

Hale County This Morning This Evening: NZIFF Review

There's frustration and beauty a-plenty in Hale County This Morning This Evening, a freewheeling doco that plays fast and loose with the traditional idea of a documentary.

Director RaMell Ross has, in truth, constructed something which is more of a moving exhibition of photos and moments to reveal more of Hale County in Alabama.

Using intimate shots, and moments of beauty behind a lens, Ross channels the excitement of a first-time filmmaker, capturing the people and the sights of the area that he came to as a teacher. But a traditional narrative aches to be placed into the context of this documentary, with glimpses rather than fully formed foundations informing his characters and the people within.

From sweat falling onto the ground like raindrops, to a neon pink religious sign glistening in the wind, to two people playing in a car lot while the storms swirl around them in the sky, Ross has an eye for the artful and the artistic in droves.

But punctuating the shots with bizarre title cards does little to add to the experience, and if anything, takes you out of what is clearly meant to be an experimental experience of a filmmaker capturing life at both its most mundane and day-to-day voyeuristic.

It's a frustration more than a condemnation of Hale County This Morning This Evening, because it's guaranteed you won't see a more carefully considered piece of documentary making this year.

But it's also a frustration, because the freeforming nature may capture some wondrous moments of banality and of life in its truly most basic form, yet it does so without turning them into something cohesive.