Hands, I think. This one is about hands.
I’m joking mostly, which means I’m serious a little bit. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt looked like it’d be a folksy and powerful tale about connection in rural Mississippi, but its extreme focus on details (like hands) hurts the experience.
I think it’s supposed to be about Mack’s life, of which we can see only moments. Of which she can live only moments. So for now we watch her learning fishing from dad or party manners from mom. And we care about all this because how Mack learns is pretty interesting.
When trapping fish, for example, she’ll take time to look at the water. She’ll caress it with her fingertips before squeezing the mud at its base and staring into the depths of her catch’s eyes. Stuff like that—sights and sounds that are beautiful and beautifully caught on camera for us.
Got it. Mack is a watcher more than a doer, sensitive and tactile. Problem is, the moviemakers not only fuel the story with these scenes (which can be emotive and thought-provoking), they make the whole movie about them. Any charm or meaning they carry gets bogged down by repetitive and lengthy close-ups. How long do we need to watch a person hugging to feel the feelings? How long do we need a close-up of hands touching other hands to think about what might be happening between them?
The movie’s structure tugs us out of the story, too. Mack is a young girl in one scene, riding bikes with her friends; then in the next, she’s a grown woman, hugging someone. In the one after that she’s young again, we’re looking at hands again. And so on. This jumping around might show us the different interactions that have made Mack who she is, but it doesn’t make for much of a story until the very end of the movie, when things finally begin to get comprehensible.
Heck, maybe that’s the point, that life is nothing but moments, and that these moments can’t truly be described or weaved together in a coherent way. I think we all feel that way sometimes. But do we need an hour and a half of repetition to remind us?
Mack at peace with Momma and Mississippi.