Sounder

Sounder was a groundbreaking film back in the early 1970's, as it depicted, with respect, an impoverished but strong black family, living in Depression-era Louisiana. The film received four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, but as usual, those senile old white guys at the Academy couldn't handle, God forbid, a film almost exclusively about black people, which meant that Sounder went home empty-handed. (To be fair, the competition did include The Godfather.) Sounder's neglect by the Academy in 1972 seems to have rubbed off on future generations, since this is not a film one sees too often on TV or is mentioned too often in other media. Myself, it wasn't until recently that I even knew that our local video store had this film, gathering dust somewhere in the family section, and fraternizing with vastly more popular items.

The film stars Paul Winfield and Cecily Tyson, parents of a long-suffering black family. They etch out a meek living, working for a white land-owner while receiving very few crops of their own for survival. The father, Nathan, and his eldest son, David Lee, attempt to compensate by hunting every night with their dog Sounder, but the old dog is not as good as he used to be, and the old man isn't as good a shot, either. Nathan, in desperation, steals some meat from a white neighbour, and is soon sentenced to one year of hard labour. The authorities consistently deny the family the knowledge of which labour camp Nathan is sent to, but eventually, with the assistance of a sympathetic white woman, they discover where he might be, and David Lee then goes on a journey to that very camp. Along the way he meets a teacher at a black school who opens his eyes to black authors, and, in turn, the need to break out of the cycle of oppression he experiences back home.

Martin Ritt, the director, has fashioned a movie that contains many interesting and wonderful moments. Some contain subtle truth, others are sentimental, heartwarming and moralizing, but rarely does the film succumb to outright preachiness. One of the wise things this film does is show the racism of the era without rubbing our faces in it, yet, nevertheless, quietly revealing the subtle undercurrents of prejudice. During the scenes in the sheriff's department, talk of "I'm only following the rules" by the sheriff is used to justify his enjoyment of denying Nathan's own wife from finding out where he's being taken to, or to even visit him in jail before he is taken away. There is also a tricky scene later on, when the white woman, an upper-class lady whose laundry is done by the wife Rebecca, attempts to find out for them where Nathan is, and the sheriff almost successfully frightens her into threatening to reveal to the town what she is doing and who she is doing it for. The scenes are not imparted with a feeling of rage or bitterness; Sounder is not an angry film, and nasty displays of bigotry would feel out of place. While great films have been made on the anger over racial divides (think of what Spike Lee has done), Sounder is not about the hurt of racism, but about the hope which can arise from the bowels of repression and misery.

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