Review of Down in the Delta

Down in the Delta is a great film but not by way of technical brilliance. This is a film in which the main drive is using the characters to tell the story. Maya Angelou takes her time to let the particulars of this tale fall into place and in the meantime creates vivid characters that grow and learn valuable lessons in life and eventually become different people during the film's running time. Alfre Woodard is the best black actress in film period, and like many other great actors or actresses she gets the shaft every awards season in favor of more mainstream actresses or ones with greater sex appeal. This film is yet another in a long line of snubbed movies that lend validity to the ever-growing fact that the Oscars are a joke, a sham, and have degraded into a downright trivial affair. The story of a family embracing their roots and making a good life outside the city is an incredibly reassuring one, but the real narrative gem of this film is the poignant and gradually revealed story of Nathan, which makes us wonder that it wasn't that long ago when the value of human life was less than that of an material object. This film deals with the ugly truth of slavery in the simplest of ways yet I found this one plot thread more compelling than the entire 156 minute running time of Amistad. Maya Angelou should direct more films in the future. Perhaps that would in some way elevate the pathetic lows cinema has reached in recent years. By contrast Americanos shows us how some thing never change. Police will always associate Latinos with gangs, and Latinos will always argue over being lumped into any category, especially "Latinos". This documentary shows us that there is such wide diversity within this "ethnic group" that how could anyone dare to call them by the same name? People represented in this film are all to happy to challenge stereotypes: like the boarder patrol officer, or take them to new, interesting, and most of all challenging heights: like those at the living art exhibit. All in all the message here is the same as in Get on the Bus: These are not Latinos, Hispanics, or all Mexicans. They are people as different from us as they are from each other, but first and foremost they are human beings, as are we all.