Lacking a linear storyline, Hale County This Morning, This Evening follows various inhabitants of Hale County in Alabama's Black Belt. Questions posited throughout as intertitles loosely structure the film. They are: “What is the orbit of our dreaming?”, “How do we not frame someone?” and “Whose child is this?” [14] Ross shared a list in Filmmaker of nonhierarchical aims and corresponding strategies to shape the film's avant-garde form including "to centralize my new community in documentary's language of truth"[15] and then to "participate, not capture; shoot from not at"[15] the community. The result is a non-fiction work that has the qualities of a visual orchestra, the 76 minute film following "the flow of five musical movements, as (Quincy) Bryant and (Daniel) Collins float in and out of frame, their lives progressing through college and fatherhood"[16] Important to Ross's imagery in the film and his art practice is what he calls the epic-banal, "the magnificence of the universe’s encasement in the social, awaiting other forms,"[17] which he says is "the direct result of looking at photography and film in the context of representation and lack of representation . . . its tendency to sensationalize." The epic-banal is "an epic moment in something incredibly simple"[18][19] that something can be profound, grandiose and deeply meaningful in the simple depictions of existence of Black people.
RaMell Ross said of the movie: "If we weren't stuck in our first-person points of view, I would argue that most problems in the world that have to do with inequality would be solved, because we wouldn't be stuck in our single points of views."[20]
Critical reception
Hale County This Morning, This Evening received critical acclaim, with a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 69 reviews, and an average rating of 8.4/10; the website's consensus states "Intimate in scope yet thematically expansive, Hale County This Morning, This Evening draws extraordinary insights out of seemingly ordinary moments."[21] It scores 85 on Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim".[22] The Village Voice'sBilge Ebiri wrote "It’s not every day that you witness a new cinematic language being born, but watching RaMell Ross’s evocatively titled documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening qualifies".[23]
Glenn Kenny of The New York Times lauded Ross's "patient and focused eye. His camera’s gaze has a quality of reserve, one that insistently imparts respect to his subjects."[24]Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film a full five stars and labelled it "visionary," while Owen Gleiberman of Variety called it a "transcendental scrapbook".[25][26] Its racial politics were commended by Melissa Vincent of The Globe and Mail, stating "At every juncture, Ross elects for ambiguity and poses a question to the viewer to answer how black bodies are viewed, encouraging the audience to perform the labour of challenging their expectations."[27] At The Atlantic Samantha N. Sheppard writes "Ross shows how cinema can do more than just relay a narrative",[28] placing the film in camp with the work of the Black Independent Movement member's Charles Burnett, Haile Gerima and Julie Dash as he "upends cinematic conventions, and in doing so, he shows blackness in a way that is rarely seen on-screen"[28]
Following the 91st Academy Awards nominations, Jason Parham of Wired argued Hale County This Morning, This Evening's inclusion for Best Documentary Feature signaled a "new age of documentary" in which "academy voters must now embrace their changing future."[29]
