An important and heartbreaking tale
There have been a good number of documentaries and films recently about racial inequality. It’s become a big theme now that the Academy have moved into showcasing stories about minorities, and Silver Dollar Road is no exception.
The film follows the story of the Reels family, who desperate struggle to protect the land their family bought one generation back after slavery. Based on the 2019 ProPublica article on this situation, Raoul Peck directs this eye-opening documentary, with the swift narration of Matriarch Mamie Reels Ellison and her niece Kim Renee Duhon, both of which desperate to try and protect their land.
With the threat of Adams Creek Associates closing in, the family are dealt a further blow when uncles Melvin and Licurtis are incarcerated for eight years after refusing to leave their homes. As a result, these two men become the longest serving inmates for civil contempt in the US.
What’s particularly prevalent here is that ripple of racial injustice that seeps into every facet of this documentary. With the wealth gap growing and the divide between rich and poor reaching breaking point, this film ultimately highlights the ways the legal system is exploited to limit land ownership in the Black community.
This story is an important one, and it’s told incredibly well too. There are a wealth of home videos from the past, along with excellent talking head interviews that help to flesh out this story in more detail.
One of the more underrated elements of this though comes from the weaving vines and constant motif of the family tree. From seeing the family tree twist through a number of different names early on, to the latter parts of the film then showing vines wrapping around sketches of Melvin and Licurtis while behind bars, this is used really well throughout.
These little segments feed into the larger picture, which really humanizes this issue of land ownership, showing how serious and damaging this can be for an entire community. And once more it circles back to racial injustice, which is a key theme that’s constantly referenced in this film.
Ultimately, Silver Dollar Road is an eye-opening examination of how racism can be manoeuvred away from physical and verbal abuse, to something that’s far more judicial and long-lasting. Whether the Reels will manage to hold onto their land or not is still up for debate, but Amazon Prime’s latest film at least shines an important spotlight on the situation.
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Verdict - 7.5/10
7.5/10