I wasn't planning on reviewing this movie before February, but with the death of Cicley Tyson (1/282021), I changed plans. This movie is a beautiful almost-mystical film about love and endurance. It's a Hollywood neorealist film that looks at a family that endures in rural Louisiana during the worst of The Great Depression and American apartheid. Paul Winfield plays a father living under a blatant kleptocracy who decides to go to desperate measures to feed his family and is thrown into prison. This leaves his wife played by Tyson in one of her greatest roles hold the family down through crooked-bosses, the police, and the judicial system that was blatantly rigged. As she keeps the family together on this front her son, played by Kevin Hooks, goes in search of his father as the white officials have refused to tell them where he was taken to. He goes on this journey that really becomes more about his future than simply searching for his father accompanied by his dog: the titular character Sounder.
The dog becomes the symbol of the families struggle and triumph. Despite the hardships and brutal struggle that is dished out to them all, they somehow survive and overcome it. The ending of this movie is one of the most beautiful and moving in cinema; Sounder is a film that becomes a rewarding experience to watch each time. All the praise given to it is well-earned and few films have been made with the same genuine earnestness.
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