SILVER DOLLAR ROAD - Mark Reviews Movies

Silver Dollar Road, Amazon Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 19, 2023

The only thing that generations of the Reels family wanted—and continue to want—is a nice, quiet place to call home. In theory and in practice, they have it. This Black family has possessed it since just after the end of slavery, when their ancestor purchased a plot of land in North Carolina, along the waterfront and perfect for laying down the foundation of a fine living. Silver Dollar Road goes back that far, because it must to how unnecessarily difficult it has been for the Reels family to continue to call this land their home.

This history and the family's ongoing legal troubles over the land are not unique to the Reels, and that only makes their story all the more infuriating to witness. Director Raoul Peck, who also uses dozens of hours of footage recorded by a team of reporters, follows and sits down with the family to present a case study in how laws and systems meant to protect people's homes can and are ignored or exploited. As is the sad and awful truth of the history and present of this country, it is often Black people and families like the Reels who receive the brunt of that injustice.

There is much about which to be angry and over which to despair in this story, but for all of that, what Peck primarily focuses upon is the sense of unity and resilience among the Reels, who don't deserve what has happened and, at the time of the film's conclusion around Memorial Day of 2022, continues to happen to them. If the American Dream is for each successive generation to be happier and more successful and generally better off than the last one, the Reels serve as a prime example of that, or at least, they almost certainly would have, if not for the constant and ongoing legal battle put upon them by land developers who seem to want their presence wiped away from this place.

It all begins, perhaps, with the land—65 acres along a river, leading out to the ocean, and lush forest, filled with history. It's a pretty as a picture, except that it's right there for the Reels since a generation after emancipation when a multiple-great-grandfather bought it, developed it into livable land, and started a family that continues to this day there. Some of that man's descendants started to fish on the river, where shrimp were plentiful enough to bring in a steady and lucrative income. Before that, the beach along the shore was only one in the area that would welcome Black people, so the Silver Dollar Road, the only one leading to the property and the river from beyond this patch of land, became an oasis away from prejudice, threats, and worse.

This land meant something—not only to the Reels, but also to the community. It's a symbol of sorts for freedom and joy, such as when one of the men around whom the legal case primarily revolves opened a night club on the property, and history. There are three cemeteries on or immediately next to the Reels' land, one of them overgrown and filled with tombstones of men and women who lived through and survived enslavement.

In a few shots, Peck gives us moving, overhead shots of the property and draws lines and diagrams of various points of interest. We see where the cemeteries are early on in the film. When the filmmaker later overlays the land with the borders of a possible golf course if the developers get what they really want, it brings chills of seeing disrespect for the dead and history. That it's this history in particular—one that generations have tried and continue to attempt to whitewash or erase entirely—make it all the more unsettling.

With the larger overview in place, Peck spends the rest of the film in close proximity to the family being most affected by the past and present course of injustice. This family is, as one might and should anticipate, just a kind, humble, and devoted group of people. Grandmother Gertrude inherited the land along with the rest of her contemporaries as an heirs' property, since her father died without a will. It, along with her immediate family, has thrived under her guidance, with her own children enjoying the land in their youths and making a good living from it as adults. Grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and further generations live on and near or gather there for summers, special occasions, and just to visit for no particular reason, except that it's family.

Then, we just watch as the dream and the reality of the land, what it has meant, what it means now, and what it could mean in the future collapse. The problem stems from the classification of heirs' property and the sudden appearance of an estranged relative with a deed to part of the land from New Jersey. Whether or not it's legitimate (It isn't by any sense of logic, except that the law makes it so) doesn't matter to those who would and do buy the land, legally turning Gertrude's two sons Melvin and Licurtis into trespassers in houses they built and on land where they have lived their entire lives.

It's an outrageous shambles on the face of it, and thankfully, that's where Peck leaves any discussion of the complex laws and the ways those developers exploit them. Silver Dollar Road is far more concerned—and rightfully so—with the impact decades of legal battles have had on the Reels. Getting to know them, as they try to go on with their lives under such impossible conditions, is reward enough, as well as a harsh and human reminder of the effects of blatant injustice.

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