All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

Jackson tells Mack’s life in detailed close-up, and it is as if we are passing the years alongside her.

When all the echoes which Jackson delicately explores come into harmony, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt strikes a resonant chord that will be heard for time eternal.

For relying on the barest narrative threads, watching All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is more an experience of transformative renewal than gleaning specific details of Mack’s story.

Written and directed by Jackson, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt is a poetic memoir of Mack’s life. Memories will appear one after another from her youngest days to her gray-haired years, non-sequentially, creating a winding road that bobs and weaves through mundane and life-defining moments alike.

“All Dirt Roads” is difficult to firmly grasp, sometimes frustratingly so, but its textures linger.

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt’s non-linear approach requires patience and its character development is a bit thin, but the film is stunning, thought-provoking, and poignant, with each frame lovingly executed.

Comparisons to the work of Terrence Malick and Julie Dash are inevitable, but Raven Jackson’s search for the sublime lacks both the rich philosophical inquiries of the former and the dense, lived-in specificity of the latter.

When creating a film that’s best described as experimental, ambition goes a long way toward the fulfillment of that goal. However, it’s not enough to carry the project if it doesn’t have something meaningful or profound to say in the end product, and that, unfortunately, is what’s missing from the premiere effort from poet Raven Jackson in her writing/directing feature debut. This offering is perhaps best characterized as a visual tone poem examining the decades-long life of an African-American woman in rural Mississippi from childhood to becoming a grandmother. It’s light on narrative and seeks to tell its story visually a la the likes of Terence Malick, relying more on showing than telling, a noble undertaking, to be sure. Nevertheless, the picture leans on its imagery so heavily that it often fails to convey anything of real substance, despite its visual beauty and some obviously heartfelt sequences in which the principals’ emotions are indeed palpable and affecting. In between, though, the sequences begin to feel padded after a while, striving to capture profound insights through events that are too innately incidental to express anything truly enlightening, reflective or philosophically rich. Instead, it offers viewers a biographical look at one individual’s ties to the people, places and everyday events that made up her life, a depiction that, regrettably, plays more like a home movie with arthouse treatment. This is perhaps best exemplified by a nearly 10-minute sequence of a hug that, frankly, grows stunningly tedious in far less time than that. I suspect that these shortcomings probably arise from the filmmaker being too close to her own subject matter, given that many of the characters in this story are based on the lives of people from her own family and ancestors. Those elements may be deeply moving to her, but they don’t translate into material that would mean much to those outside her own immediate circle. With that said, however, this release is not without its merits, most notably its gorgeous cinematography and beautiful original score. Beyond that, though, “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt” is likely to try the patience of many viewers, including those willing to give a chance to its attempt at an alternative inventive approach. This truly feels more like a film or art school project than something that would appeal to even the most ardent of diehard open-minded cinephiles. And that’s unfortunate, because I’m sure there’s an interesting story buried somewhere within this material. Sadly, it never surfaces but remains camouflaged in its own artistic trappings.

A24 has released a very good looking book about (or around) this movie. It is a bit strange, because they have not released such companion pieces to the certified hits of their catalog, but the truth is that the book is incredibly more interesting than the movie, at the same time shedding some light on what kind of sub-product and first-time director we are dealing with here.1. The photos in the book look great, not because they are well photographed, but because their subjects are gorgeous, just like the real characters in this book (like the lady who eats clay).2. The book has the shadow of Raven Jackson's editorial hand all over it (biased praise from a former teacher in the foreword mentions an episode in which the then-student refuted an editing suggestion by claiming "That's not me" - while it's true that filmmakers need to follow their gut, the episode is told as an about-face in your understanding of where Raven Jackson stands as a first-time director.)3. The book includes Jackson's to-do list for the film, with goals like "stay close, stay wide" and other esoteric platitudes that make film-making sound like a recipe for gingerbread.Still, the movie feels and looks vague, often lost, and tends to cover up its flaws with a thick layer of pretentiousness, while never fully engaging the viewer with either a narrative or a mood you can grasp. It's basically 7-11 visual poetry, three for the price of one.