Buried History

Before I can post my list of top movies from 2022, I need to catch up by posting reviews of several said movies. Two are in fact documentaries: one I'll wager many of my readers have heard of, and one I'll wager they haven't. Today, I'll examine the latter.

Descendant is a fascinating dive into American history from filmmaker Margaret Brown. It focuses on Africatown, near Mobile, Alabama. This is the area where, in 1860, the last ship to transport enslaved Africans to the United States, the Clotilda, arrived illegally and was deliberately sunk to hide any evidence.

The movie opens as something of an "unsolved mystery." Residents of the town recount the story of the Clotilda as it was handed down to them, but as the ship itself has never been discovered, it's a somewhat debatable story. And others in the town (including local descendants of the slavers themselves, who don't appear in the documentary) might just as well wish be forgotten.

The film quickly opens up to be about more than the question of finding the ship. The question of justice looms large. What would it take to make things right today? Not even all the people whose lives are more directly impacted today can agree on that, so how are YOU to feel? It's heady stuff with no right answers, and stirs up a lot of thoughts and feelings.

And, as such, it really can't offer you any kind of resolution -- which admittedly hurts the movie's ability to function as a narrative. Ultimately, my grade for the movie takes a hit for this reason, for my own impulse to seek a fully packaged experience in a film. Still, the other thing I tend to seek is to be taken on an emotional journey, and Descendant definitely does that. 

Moreover, this is exactly the kind of story that some people -- in the "ignore racism and it will go away" camp -- are trying to suppress. This movie is a powerful demonstration of the other (truer) argument: that racism can't be addressed (or even fully understood) without examining the full scope of its evils. I'd never heard of the Clotilda, and certainly did not know that the importation of slaves was actually made illegal in the U.S. well before the the Civil War. Yes, it's awful history... but it is the history of the people in Descendant, and they want to share it.

It's apropos, perhaps, that this story you may never have heard from is now being recounted in a movie you've also probably never heard of -- because it was released without fanfare on Netflix, in the same way 99% of things released on Netflix are released without fanfare. I only learned of Descendant from a film podcast I listen to, and I'm very glad a did. I give it a B, and a recommendation.