Dawtas of da Dust

There are some good things going on in Daughters of the Dust and then there is the other 107 minutes of the movie. I'll start with the positive and work my way down. The acting was pretty decent. No one was terrible, and this is pretty impressive considering the rest of the movie. Mainly though, the movie as a whole has an idea behind it to work. They feel there is a story to be told. The director isn't working with nothing.

But, so much didn't work about this movie. The music was some of the worst I've ever heard. It was like the makers of Tron made African influenced music. It hurt every moment of the film, and it was in so many unnecessary spots. The cinematography had no cue. The framing of all the shots at first seemed to be doing something. Until I realized that they all just framed the characters in this shaky off center position. It became more of a distraction than art. I have also never been so assaulted by a color scheme. This blue vs yellow theme was shoved down the throat of my eyes over and over and over again. I mean, does the director think they are being artsy by repeating it so much, or do they really think I don't get what they are trying to do? Finally the special effects were pretty terrible. I know, this wasn't exactly a big budget movie, but the special effects were about as good as a bad episode of the X-Files.

So, if I can get past all these technical (for the most part) aspects of the film it wasn't terrible. It tells its story in a different way (though I wouldn't say it's new). That's cool, but I can't do that right? The film was shot more amateurishly than Breathless, and that's saying a lot considering that is the look Breathless is going for. If I just dismissed the problems with all these basic film properties then that would kind destroy what it should be trying to do as film. When a film fails at these basic levels it kind of dismisses itself. Someone laughs at a bad actor cause they sound stupid. Daughters of the Dust is kind of like that. You know they're trying, but so much just isn't working.