Review by wotiva

Good and bad.. so let me cover the good first.. So set in plantation era, focusing on a couple of rich black guys and black culture. Black/white tensions, scenes of beautiful rolling cotton fields, a beautiful cast. The panning shots, lighting, scenes are beautiful and really deserve an oscar for the filmography and score. Some of the singing and music was just stunning, and built into the story beautifully. The acting is pretty good, and scenes are really painted out well.

The negative? The story is pretty rambling and weak amd definitely plays second fiddle to the atmosphere of the film. Also, while talking about the past it is solidly in the modern era in its attitudes toward race relations. It's like a modern leftist view of how the plantation era was, with a wakanda like optimism of black relationships. So it's a (modern) 'black' idealist view, making the characters more like charicatures, and similarly white people are depicted as 'crackers' in the most part, though there is some sympathy for the more musical white characters.

So what is this film? An atmosphere piece with great music amd filmography. Did I like it? Yes, it was a beautiful film. And no, it had preconceived ideas of black and white people (nice and fun black people, awful and boring white people). That sheen of discrimination makes it a 'black' film, and through its racially discriminating approach, a little two dimensional. Should you watch it? Sure, it's beautiful and sounds great.