Silver Dollar Road
Raoul Peck’s documentary focuses on a tale of injustice meted out to an African-American family in North Carolina.
The veteran director Raoul Peck is probably best known for his splendid Oscar-nominated documentary of 2016 I Am Not Your Negro. That film featured James Baldwin and it was driven by the eloquence and impact of his words. No such motor is present in Silver Dollar Road. It still stands as evidence of Peck’s skill as a filmmaker however. His visual sense and his adept use of music on the soundtrack are highly expressive of the African-American community in which his film is set. Indeed, the use at the start of an a cappella performance of the song ‘I'm Going Home’ is a perfect example of this. All this is in contrast to a recent film like Cassius X - Becoming Ali which lacked any cinematic feel. Nevertheless, the story of the Reels family and of their home in Carteret County, North Carolina proves to be one which, for all the sympathy it arouses, is short on dramatic power.
Written statements at the start refer to how in 1865 General Sherman accepted the need for former slaves to be given land on which to work and this leads into the story of how property at Adams Creek came into the possession of Elijah Reels and then descended to his son Marshall who died in 1970. Marshall did not leave a will but it had seemed that under what was known as heirs’ property law his family members were indeed entitled to the land as he had intended when naming his widow, Gertrude, as the general administrator (she herself, a remarkable survivor, is seen here celebrating her 95th birthday). But in the event legal chaos followed when one of Marshall’s brothers claimed sole entitlement and then went on to sell the land to the Adams Creek Associates, a company that planned big upmarket developments for this 13-acre waterfront site, an area known as Silver Dollar Road.
Central to Peck’s film is the court case that followed with the company claiming possession of the property and seeking to evict Melvin and Licurtis who as sons of Marshall had lived on the disputed land all their lives. When both men refused to leave, it led to the court jailing them. This was in 2011. The family including their sister, Mamie, who along with her niece Kim is a leading presence in the film, were determined to challenge the sentence, but it took eight years before a fresh hearing enabled the two brothers to be released.
Many African Americans were subjected to pressure by developers (mention is made of the fact that in this way black farmers lost around 90% of their land in the 20th century) and the film sees what happened to the Reels family as an example of racism, not least in the severity of the sentence imposed. Peck himself comes from Haiti but, quite apart from the fact that he focuses on Mamie and Kim and on other family members including Melvin and Licurtis enabling them to tell their story direct to camera, he is an apt person to make this film since he patently identifies closely with the Reels. As a telling illustration of a wider injustice, Silver Dollar Road has value but, as I have already suggested, it lacks something in dramatic force. One reason for that is that, despite two instances of footage shot by Mamie at the time being included, most of the story unfolds at a distance through the spoken recollections of the family members. Consequently, although the tale emerges chronologically only in its final stages do we have the sense of events happening on camera. Furthermore, in addition to the inevitable omission of what took place inside the courthouse, the legal arguments are described as too complex to be set out in the film and that further reduces the drama since the legal battle is such a crucial element here. Also, when it comes to the years of imprisonment suffered by Melvin and Licurtis, Peck falls back briefly on animation in an attempt to express it but that is all that he can do in that respect.
It is possible that Raoul Peck was aware of the inherent limitations in what he could portray because he makes a point of capturing the atmosphere of Adams Creek in a way that underlines the fact that for the Reels this was their home. Both the location shooting and the inclusion of family photographs contribute to this. It's an approach that is rewarding at the start but which tends to draw out the film unnecessarily in its late stages. The release of Melvin and Licurtis is a natural climax but after that the film is inclined to meander when a more succinct final section would have been preferable. Silver Dollar Road is unquestionably an honourable venture, but it could well be that the original format used to tell this tale – an article by Lizzie Presser published in 2019 by ProPublica on its website and in The New Yorker – was the one best suited for it.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Mamie Reels Ellison, Kim Renee Duhon, Licurtis Reels, Melvin Davis, Gertrude Reels, Anita Earls, Charles Lee Reels, Nate Ellison, Roderick Ellison, James Hairston, Wayne Lawrence.
Dir Raoul Peck, Pro Rémi Grellety, Blair Foster, Hébert Peck and Raoul Peck, Screenplay Raoul Peck, based on an article by Lizzie Presser for ProPublica and The New Yorker, Ph Kate Campbell and Mayeta Clark, Ed Alexandra Strauss, Music Alexei Aigui.
Amazon Studios/JuVee Productions/Pro Publica/Velvet Film-Met Film Distribution.
100 mins. USA. 2023. UK and US Rel: 13 October 2023. Cert. PG.
