tandywilliams Beautiful movie/ scenery, just wished there was more of a continuous script in the dialogue.

brownsuggarry I really enjoyed this movie. Its been a few years since I've seen it and I saw it twice. As a matter of fact, I'll rent it again or buy it if I can. No plot (I don't get the other poster comments). The movie was about a family and every day life as I saw it. I enjoyed it because it was pleasant, no guns, no thugs (lol), just a simple movie about a family and a group of people I knew nothing about. I still want to visit that area in South Carolina one day. I also enjoyed the movie because the actors are not well known actors in my eyes. I get tired of seeing the same actors in movies. I will do some research on the Gullah (sp) people.

Polaris_DiB This would be the second non-abstract movie I've seen without a plot. The other one was Morvern Callar, and I must say this one beats that one out by a long shot because this one actually had symbolism and intended meaning. The loose plot-like structure is about a bunch of African-Americans in 1902 who had lived in isolation on an island for years and were getting ready to go back to Africa, only now they had to deal with issues of the African diaspora and displacement and what it means to their identity.Very rich visuals are about one of the only things that can really keep your attention going in this film, but if you sit down and force yourself to pay attention you can get a lot out of the dialog as well. It just requires an extra amount of effort to pay off, but once you expend that effort you might just get something out of it.A little more difficult is the fact that at least four different distinct languages are spoken in this film, with only one moment done with subtitles. The languages I caught besides English were German, French, and Arabic (?) but there may very well have been much more (I think there was a little Spanish and some Latin as well).I can't really speak much about the technical qualities of the film other than the fact that the symbolism and imagery are amazing and the script is tedious. It's really hard to focus on more than that, unfortunately.--PolarisDiB

tcdarkness I saw this film for a film class at UF. We have seen some slow and some fast-paced films. This is by far the slowest we have seen and is the most boring piece of cinema I have ever seen.Now, it's not ALL bad. The movie has some cultural significance and was obviously researched before filming. The shot selection was very good, colors vibrant, and you could feel the actors' emotions.But the story... was slow. There's a load of characters and I couldn't figure out who was related to who and what all had happened with the pregnant woman. The movie was like the opening title-card sequence to Black Hawk Down stretched out to 2 hours in length. There's parts with loads of music and no dialogue and vice versa. The movie seemed to reach an ending 5 times before it finally did. The writer-director clearly had no clue as to what pacing was.The story was basically about some African-Americans at the turn of the century who boat down to their family on the shores of some island that is separated on one side by a river and the ocean on the other. They want a better life and are split about whether the island or the mainland is the better spot for it. It takes them two agonizing (to us) hours to decide.Long [very long] story short: half the class walked out in the first hour. And I was jealous of those who did when I reached the end of the film. 2/10