Daughters of the Dust

Daughters of the Dust is a film that takes place in Ibo Landing on Sea Island off the coast of South Carolina. The film is depicting the last day that the Peazant family will all be together in Ibo Landing, as they are preparing to move to the mainland together. The family consists of a number of generations of Peazants from Nana who is the grandmother to Eli who is married to Eula who has recently been raped by a man, and will not tell her husband Eli who did this to her. Eula refuses to tell Eli because she is fearful it will ruin him and tear him apart, and although she has good intentions it only causes Eli to want more. We then meet their unborn baby girl who we see throughout the film running around with her parents, with the other children on the island, and even through the lens of the photographer at one point too. She also narrates at times in the film as well and we hear her laughter and listen to her tell us what is going on at times too. There is then Haagar who married into the Peazant family who is the mother of Iona who is in love with a young Cherokee man, St. Julien Lastchild, and Iona is planning on staying on the Island with him so they can be together. In the beginning of the film we are able to listen in on a letter that he writes to her professing his love and begging her to stay with him, and it is so moving and loving that I almost cried because you could really hear the love in his words he wrote for her.

Those characters are just the beginning there is then Yellow Mary Peazant who is returning from Cuba with her friend Trula, they are both wearing puffy dresses that are ridiculous for living on the Island, but are beautiful to them. And then there is Viola who is bringing Yellow Mary and Trula to the Island along with a photographer to photograph the Peazant family all together. Throughout the whole film we learn about all of the trials and tribulations that these Gullah women have gone through throughout their time on the Island, and we witness some very special moments between Nana and Eli as they discuss the family and how far they have come. We as the audience get to witness and learn about all that this family has gone through to get where they are then, and everything that they have gone through is so harsh that you cannot help but feel for these people and want to know more about them.

The Film Daughters of the Dust was a very hard film for me to completely understand and grasp the real story about what was really happening throughout the film. But I really wanted to give this film a chance to move me and to let me feel what was really going on in the lives of these characters as well. I am still not sure after viewing again if I still really got what the film was trying to tell us, but the story in itself was very interesting and sad and raw in so many ways. I cannot say that this is a movie that I would ever really recommend to anyone, but it is an okay film to watch if you really have the time sit and really really listen to what they are saying. The dialogue was very hard to understand throughout the film, and I think that that is a big reason why I did not understand exactly to the full extent what was really going on in the film, but I feel that if the dialogue was more clear and the film was not so all over the place I would most likely enjoy the film more and understand the significance of the film as well.