At first approximation—from the eye of God, say, or extraterrestrials—each detail of human life is dramatically equivalent. The terrible enormous wars, a forgettable melody, walking to the corner store, falling in love. That’s not to say that it’s all trivial; just the opposite. It’s all utterly astonishing, a collision of physical and biological fortune that may forever defy understanding. Only the evolutionary utility of placing events, and people, on a continuum between banality and ecstasy prevents us from constantly attesting to the marvel of being here. Hale County is both a philosophical—in RaMell Ross’s words, “the universe’s encasement in the social”—and a political statement. The philosophical is easier (not easy, but easier) to grasp; Ross’s essay linked in the last sentence will help. The political is more subtle and more damning. Hellfire damning, and that’s still an understatement. We kill and enslave and dishonor because we fail to see what God and the aliens see. How strange that we need art to show the weakness of art to show the deceptions of mind; and even stranger, that such a tortured path might lead us home. 10
Hale County, This Morning, This Evening, starring Latrenda “Boosie” Ash, Quincy Bryant, and Daniel Collins, The Cinema Guild, 2018. Reviewed July 9, 2025.