All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt - Movie Review

Critics Score - 6 of 10

General Audience Score - 4 of 10

When it comes to art and cinema, tastes will vary as widely and diversely as there are people on the planet. It can very much be a situation of one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Some people will have a connection to certain pieces where others find next to nothing, and vice versa, which is one of the most fascinating things about us as humans. A new piece of cinema from writer/director Raven Jackson and distributed by A24 studios is called All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt, and it’s very much a cinematic work of art. This slow moving film is very soft and gentle, quiet, in fact there are long periods of the film with no spoken dialogue at all. When it comes to visual aesthetics, however, it is very pretty to look at. That being said it was a film I never really connected with and although there are certain individuals who will absolutely love this piece of art, I just never quite tuned into the wavelength this movie was on. The plot is non-linear. It skips around in time a bit and was almost like one of the lesser accessible Terrence Malick films, which is not necessarily a bad thing, just not really my cup of tea. This is very much not a film for general audiences and even some of the arthouse crowd might find All these Dirt Roads might be just a little too Salty for their Taste.

SYNOPSIS - The film opens with a close up shot of a fish in someone’s hands, it’s scales being gently stroked by an index finger, these are two things the film does make it a point of repeating throughout its runtime. The first being the close up camera work, this is a very intimate film which I will elaborate more on later, the second being the film’s fixation on hands. We spend minutes upon minutes watching people holding hands, caressing and using their hands for a variety of things, usually delicate ones. The hands throw the fish back into the water and we see Mack (Kaylee Nicole Johnson) as a child of no more than ten or eleven, she’s out fishing with her father and sister Josie (Jayah Henry). As we watch her hands, again, on the fishing reel, as her fingers slowly turn to reel the line in, her fathers hand is also in the shot, we hear his voice say, “Not too fast”. Next we see Mack’s hands and she cradles and slowly begins pulling a red rope with a metal fish trap on the end of it, they’ve caught a catfish. Soon we begin to hear the sounds of a thunderstorm rumbling in the background which bring an end to this trip. But the camera is left behind to let us watch the slowly moving water swirling around with mud and debris clouding any view of the contents underneath. Many of these shots linger and allow the viewer to soak in the moments, not that there’s any large events happening, but we are repeatedly left to absorb these moments of simplicity.

After this the scene changes and we get a few shots of one of the fish with some directions from Mack’s mother (Sheila Atim) on how to skin and filet it. Then we watch the girls riding their bikes around town when they come upon a house that’s caught fire and the local men throw buckets of water on the blaze in a futile attempt to put the fire out. Mack and her friends stand transfixed as the flames engulf the interior and flow out of a hole in the roof. Then without warning or onscreen text to alert us, we’re transported into the future and watch mid-teen Mack (Charleen McClure) walking down a path through the woods with some friends and a boy she likes named Wood (Reginald Helms Jr.). The film jumps somewhat sporadically through timelines in Mack’s life, as a young girl, teenager and finally as an adult. Although we do get glimpses of both the infant and aged Mack, the child and adult versions are the two timelines we spend a vast majority of our time with. Inexplicably we head back into Mack’s youth and we watch her mother and father share an intimate moment as If I Were Your Woman by Gladys Knight & The Pips queues up in the background. As they dance, we watch their hands slowly clasp together in affectionate touches as Mack sits on the floor and observes. But as we wind our way back and forth between sequences from the two timelines, these tender moments, in and of themselves, are quite nice to linger in and enjoy. But the lack of a main narrative or character arcs hurt any sense of story progression or pace that the film might ever have hoped to establish.

To start my critique of this film, it must be said that of course all film criticism being subjective, I found this very simple film in particular one I had some difficulty in rating mediocre. My appreciation for All Dirt Roads as a piece of art is high, in other words I can understand it, why artistically it’s good, just like I can understand why the Mona Lisa is a valuable piece of art. But if someone gifted me said painting, I’d have no interest in hanging it in my house other than when visitors come over as a talking point and way to blow their minds. I will say I enjoyed the film’s tone overall, as I’ve mentioned, it is very intimate, soft and gentle, like a warm blanket on a breezy day on a front porch. The pacing of Dirt Roads was very slow, which by comparison the film Perfect Days also was a very slow moving film, and monotonous to boot, but I was able to tune into and relate with the themes of Days much easier than Roads. But even with it’s shorter, hour and a half runtime, the pacing of Roads barely crept along, as nothing much happens for large portions of the film and we’re just allowed to soak in scene after scene of intimate takes. But probably one of my biggest hang ups with the film is that Jackson’s dialogue light screenplay and plot is non linear and there seemed to be no through line. Although I’m sure the director could help explain it to me, as it moves to and from present to past, then future, I was left with many voids and blanks to fill in of what was the film was saying, if anything, narratively. But again, it was very cinematic. There are so many beautifully captured and lingering shots, as I mentioned, especially those featuring hands, and I enjoyed many of the shot compositions. I do not doubt there are absolutely some individuals that will watch this film, think of their mothers and burst into tears, that’s very much the mood it exudes and type of film it is. Yet as much as I tried to get on this Road however, I never found myself able to fully go for the stroll Raven Jackson wants to take us on.

SUMMARY - This film is about as Arthousy, if you understand my terminology, as they come, the cinephiles, critics and independent film lovers will be among the most inclined to appreciate what Jackson if offering us. But unless you happen to have a very specific palette, All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt might just be one best left along the side of the road.