G | 1 h 45 min | Drama, Comedy | 1972
Set in Depression-hit Louisiana, director Martin Ritt’s film is about an impoverished black family, the Morgans: Nathan (Paul Winfield); Rebecca (Cicely Tyson); their eldest son who goes to school, David (Kevin Hooks in his debut); their younger children, Earl and Josie; and their beloved dog, Sounder.
To the Morgans, poverty isn’t some distant social phenomenon; it’s a lived reality. They feel it in their hunger pangs, they see it in each other’s parched lips, and they feel it in their aching bones, as they spend years sharecropping on a farm. Punishing exhaustion lulls them to sleep at night, and a grim reminder of a day’s labor still ahead rouses them each morning.
Torn garments, bare kitchen shelves, a single cramped bed for all three children, and an open firewood stove mark their time on that farm. Meat reaches the dinner table only if Nathan gets lucky hunting in the deep woods.
Yet, they’re happy. There’s back-breaking work but also moments of laughter, pranks, singing, and even baseball. Young David, Ritt’s protagonist, trudges miles to school, but he also has fun fooling around with his siblings and Sounder in open grasslands on lush, green plantations.
Focus on the Family
William H. Armstrong’s novella inspired the film, but unlike Armstrong, Ritt and screenwriter Lonne Elder III dwell more on the fortunes of the family than on the dog. While Armstrong uses no names, preferring to universalize his characters as “father,” “mother,” and the like, naming only the dog, Ritt inverts that treatment on screen, giving his characters’ names, dignity, and interiority while rendering the dog a secondary character, if not a mere cipher.Just as Louisiana’s countryside weather is extreme, so are the lives of the characters. When they sweat, they’re bathed in it, their necks and forearms gleaming beneath a remorseless sun. If the sweat is reassuringly cool as it breaks from their skin, it’s only briefly so before it, too, is enveloped in heat. Flies follow them into the house at night and out of it at daybreak, like pesky landlords in a fairy tale buzzing on about overdue rent.
The crux of Ritt’s film lies in an aside so playful that it’s easy to miss. David wonders why Nathan, after spending one whole night hunting with no luck, wants to hunt again the following night. Yet he senses wisdom in his father’s rustic idiom: “You lose some of the time, what you always go afta, but you lose all the time, what you don’t go afta.”
For all his lack of learning, Nathan is convinced that missed opportunities matter. He laments those he’s missed growing up, but instead of turning dismal, he stays hopeful for David. It’s why he and Rebecca place David’s education above anything else. They’re thrilled that he can read and write, however haltingly, but they want him to do and be so much more.
Ritt, who brilliantly directed Jon Voight in “Conrack,” delivers a similar message of yearning here, not just through David’s awe of the man, Nathan, who’s central to his life, but also through three women.
In his mother, David sees a life of drudgery he’d like to spare her. Through a sympathetic white woman for whom Rebecca does laundry, he stumbles upon the magical realm of books, where sheer wonders are hidden between their exquisite hardcovers. Finally, Camille (Janet MacLachlan), who is a teacher at a faraway school, kindles in him a desire to understand and face life on his terms, through intense learning.
Composer-musician Taj Mahal’s bluesy soundtrack bursts with raw energy and pathos. He plays the guitar and sings as one of the supporting characters on screen, and plays other instruments, including the banjo, off screen.
“Sounder” catapulted Tyson from relative obscurity as a fashion model to stardom, winning her Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for Best Actress. Producers first refused to cast her as Rebecca because of her glamorous image, offering her the role of Camille instead, but her stubbornness prevailed.
Tyson brings a lived-in feel to her every move as a wife and mother whose gut-wrenching sacrifice and tenacity beats grueling odds. Her face is forlorn, her walk is weary, her smile is spent. But her eyes? They sparkle with a quiet fire that gives her children hope, even amid despair.
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