All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (2023)

My 27 movie A-Z film-a-thon, day 2.

I am watching a movie for each letter of the alphabet I would otherwise not get to for a while.
So far I have watched:

13 Assassins (Takashi Miike, 2010) – 9/10

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Days 2: A

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson, 2023)

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (2023) is halfway in between Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life and David Gordon Green’s George Washington. The film quietly paints a portrait of a black family living in rural Mississippi over multiple decades, using beautiful cinematography and an incredible nature sound design. It creates a dreamlike atmosphere, like a collage of memories from childhood. There isn’t enough “there” there. The dialogue is way too minimal, and the actors seem overly blocked, always trapped inside invisible walls.

I can’t stress how beautiful this looks, though. For the last half hour, I continuously thought every shot was going to be the final image of the movie. Any would have made a perfect ending. The movie resonates and lingers.

The title is curious. It recalls one’s reaction to always tasting unpaved road when you travel down one, tires kicking debris in the air. But…salt? Wouldn’t dirt roads taste like…dirt? The director has talked about it, and I’m not satisfied. She said it is a metaphor. “Roads” are metaphorical roads. Also, geophagy (eating clay dirt) is common among poor families in the south, but the family does not seem to be overly poor. Also, why would she be eating the dirt from a dirty road? That would be the dirtiest dirt?

A movie like this is only as good as its weakest component. It is very impressive for many reasons, but it is also rather vacuous in content and intent. Still, make sure to keep your eye on Raven Jackson. She made a polished, expensive feeling movie on likely almost no budget. I expect big things from her.

7.5/10