Sounder (1972) - G
Common Sense Note
Parents should know that there's a bit of mild language. However, all are in the service of the movie, which doesn't pull punches in depicting the poverty, desperation, and bigotry of the rural South during the Great Depression.
Families who watch this film might discuss whether movies usually depict life realistically. Do movies ever gloss over distasteful but real life experiences such as poverty, death, or loss? Why or why not? Does this movie do so? Do you think realism adds to or detracts from stories?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: S. K. List
Without sugar-coating the hard lives of black Louisiana sharecroppers, the Morgan family's enduring ties to each other set alight this film depicting the poverty, desperation, and bigotry of the rural South during the Great Depression.
Beautifully enhanced by the country blues of Lightnin' Hopkins and the hollers and rough-hewn cakewalks of the inimitable Taj Mahal (who appears as Ike), SOUNDER stands out as an honest celebration of a strong family's triumph over poverty and racism.
Hunting late at night, David Lee and his father fail to bring home some desperately needed meat. But a day later, David's mother, Rebecca, shakes him and his younger sister and brother awake to the smell of frying ham. In short order, the sheriff and a landowner show up to arrest dad Nathan for smokehouse burglary. When Rebecca leaves to learn her husband's fate, David shoulders the tasks of an adult.
After Nathan is sentenced to a year of hard labor, Rebecca and David find out he's been sent far away. Rebecca sends David off to contact him and, on the way, David meets a trailblazing teacher in an all-black school and determines to attend. When Nathan comes home lamed, he supports David's wish, but it takes the family -- and David himself -- some time to realize that this is the best course for all of them. The transformation of svelte, elegant Cicely Tyson into the ragged, destitute Rebecca epitomizes the sharp contrast between the life most Americans lead and the back-breaking, desperate circumstances the Morgan family transcends. Trapped in the downward grind of sharecropping, they take pleasure in lively baseball games, a neighbor's music, and each other, before returning to the primitive toil of cultivating cane and producing marketable syrup. With little to call their own, especially a sense of community respect, they draw closer together, depending on the family circle to hold them intact.
Winfield and Tyson skillfully balance on the fine line between the proud flash of individuality, and the drab obsequious shell society demands. In support, a range of actors with real -- if largely unknown -- faces adds to the film's authentic feel. This includes Kevin Hooks as a convincing David, whose attachment to his father is palpable. It takes an argument before Nathan can acknowledge that love and before David realizes that it is out of an equal love that his father urges him toward the faraway school.
The other children onscreen, especially in the country schoolhouse, are frequently wooden, a minor flaw in an otherwise excellent production. The hard, hot light of the rural South floods its scenes, revealing the depths of feeling which saw some families through such trials.
For another look at the same time and place, see The Color Purple.
Rate It!
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ViolenceImplied rather than depicted. The dog Sounder is shot, but recovers. Father Nathan Lee Morgan is hauled out of his family's arms and sent to a prison camp, but the resolution of this injustice is the foundation of the film. |
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LanguageA nasty insult and "shut up" are used casually once each; "Bastards" once in righteous anger. |
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Social BehaviorDepicts the poverty, desperation, and bigotry of the rural South during the Great Depression. |
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