The word “impressionistic” is thrown around far too often by us film nerds (yes, I admit I am part of the problem). There really isn’t any other single word that better describes Raven Jackson’s feature directorial debut, though. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is like a piece of impressionist music: harmonies abound, structure be damned! This boundary-pushing masterpiece of slow cinema (another bit of jargon thrown around too often) may not be everyone’s cup of tea because of its unique style, but for me personally, it is a cup I can’t wait to drink from again.
In a decades-spanning collage of sorts, Mackenzie (“Mack” for short, played by newcomer Charleen McClure) spends the entire film reminiscing on her childhood and young adulthood as a black woman in Mississippi. We consistently linger on hands and bodies embracing, along with other delicate little moments which might prove totally incidental in the hands of any other filmmaker. Raven Jackson isn’t quite like any other filmmaker I’m aware of, though.
I was very much looking forward to All Dirt Roads after having seen Nettles, Jackson’s 2018 short-film anthology, earlier this year. What amazes me most about her first feature is how she maintains her unvarnished voice, so evident in the tiny individual snapshots Nettles gives us, for over ninety minutes. All of those shorts were exceptionally quiet character studies, and so is this film, and perhaps even quieter at times. For the most part, you could have heard a pin drop in the theater I was in. Jackson holds our attention through deliberate framing, editing, and sheer commitment.
An early scene that sticks out in my mind is young Mack (Kaylee Nicole Johnson) watching her mother Evelyn (Sheila Atim) and father Isaiah (Chris Chalk) dance at a house party. The mood between the couple is electric, and perhaps further amplified in Mack’s adult mind by the passage of time. There’s no way young Mack could have viewed their dancing as sensitively and observantly as Jackson and cinematographer Jomo Fray depict it. There’s probably no way she sat still enough to see every minute of it, and I do mean “every minute.” These sorts of luxurious scenes in this film go on quite a long time compared to most other films, and it may throw you off if you’re not expecting it.
What elevates this bold execution into the realm of masterful direction is the fact that that dance scene (along with many other scenes) has its harmonic equal later in the film. Mack and her childhood sweetheart Wood (Reginald Helms Jr., also a newcomer) meet serendipitously as young adults and share a long tango-like embrace. Jackson has referred to these kinds of thematic pairings as “slant rhymes,” and that’s blessedly more succinct and accurate than I could ever hope to be when explaining what makes this film so groundbreaking.
For all its meandering, there is a clear structure to the piece once we realize that Mack is about to be a mother herself. There is a tough decision she must make, which leads to perhaps the best scene in the film. Ironically, it’s a moment where the camera is maybe as still as it ever gets, and Jackson allows McClure to set the tempo rather than the camera (not that there’s ever anything at all wrong with Jackson’s eye here). It’s a less-flashy version of something like the denouement of Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea, where Casey Affleck’s Lee Chandler finally owns up to his emotional barriers, for better or worse. We’ve seen Mack travel through time in her mind so much, and now, time must unequivocally stop. That’s the moment this film goes from great to excellent; from spiritually sound to corporeally concrete. | George Napper
The St. Louis International Film Festival 2023 continues through Nov. 19. Single film tickets are $15 for general admission, $12 for Cinema St. Louis members and students with valid current photo IDs. Further information is available here. For information on future screenings of All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, watch the movie’s official page from A24.
