SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Tyreece Hulme One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

unkoftitan I love the South dearly because of its flawed but rich past, and this film captures the beauty, complexity, and even the shame of the South in way that only a great documentary can. On the surface, its a film of two Mardi Gras parades---one white and one black---in Mobile, Alabama, which is the site of the oldest parade of this type. This account of moneyed white elites and earnest striving blacks, both proud of their history, and looking for a kind of middle ground in the face of a dark past is a poignant portrayal of a unique slice of America life. Watch it and draw your own conclusions about race relations. You'll be happy you took the time, and you'll be better off for the experience.

huh_oh_i_c In itself, this is not a bad film. It offers, what I'm sure many white people will feel, a completely unbiased view on the segregation in Mobile, Alabama. I beg to differ. What is perhaps the films greatest strength and its greatest weakness, is that the maker comes from a 'prominent' white family (read: most likely deeply conservative) with still a lot of economic power (read: used to have many slaves in the past). This is why I'm suspicious of the films' unbiasedness.However, there are ominous indicators that the maker is really trying to be as open-minded of her background. Of this, the mentioning of the trees is the most poignant. A VIP white man, is explaining that they really like trees, because of tradition and so on. He seems to be completely unaware that trees in the Deep South symbolize lynchings of blacks. It's rather insensitive. It's like stressing the fact to Jews that Germans really like to cook their food on gas. In itself there's nothing wrong with that statement, but you catch my drift. The fact that the makers choose to put this in, seems to say that she's not afraid to mention the darker parts of her past. Or, the more depressing explanation would be that the maker herself is not aware of the fact that trees and the South stand for lynchings.Also, the similarity between all the Mardi Gras Orders and the KKK is high. It doesn't require a lot of imagination that the KKK took symbols and rituals from these Orders. And it wouldn't surprise me to learn that many of these Orders had been highly instrumental in oppressing the African American people.The end of the film is even more sinister. It is revealed that the grandfatherly man who is interviewed throughout the film is in fact the grandfather of the filmmaker. His last line is: "For what I am about to say, you have to stop recording" And indeed, the credits start rolling at that point. Now, in any other film this would have seemed a triumph of respect of privacy over the present day omnipresent eye of the camera. But in this case I imagined that he would tell her all sorts of horrible stuff that the Order of Myths used to do.In closing, I am reasonably sure that the filmmaker was trying for a balanced view and she might have achieved that, within her capabilities. Insofar as anyone can be impartial, she might have come closest. She seems to be best embodied by the Prodigal Liberal daughter, who returns to embrace her deeply conservative "heritage".However, it's ultimately a quite depressing film and subject, since all the white people are a.) insisting that they don't wanna change anything and b. are saying that black people WANT to be segregated themselves. We never hear the black people say that, actually. And c.) the black people don't seem very confident in their ability to change things, and seemed to have completely settled in their subservient role.Definitely a case of "Even Obama can not", in the sense that even an Obama-presidency won't change this in any, any way.

J. Ian Irby This near-perfect documentary explains the history of the oldest Mardi Gras in America, in Mobile, AL, as well as the current state of traditions in that Southern city. Mardi Gras balls and parade presentations are still almost exclusively segregated. The major strength of this film is that it seems like anyone (black, white, elderly, very young, official and amateur) will talk freely to director Margaret Brown. Compelling interviews, all-access footage, captivating cinematography, and a good score are the major highlights.This film is highly recommended. It will hold your interest and keep you talking about deep issues afterward. Congratulations to the crew, as this is one of those films that any trained filmmaker would have loved to have made this well.

lastliberal Writer/director Margaret Brown gives an excellent picture of the Mardi Gras traditions in Mobile, Alabama. Along the way she also gives a very good picture of black/white relations in the South even to this day.Most people think of New Orleans when they hear Mardi Gras, but the fact is that Mobile's traditions date to before New Orleans was a city. Mardi Gras is still mostly a Southern tradition, even though it has spread to Texas, San Diego and St. Louis. It's rich history came over from Europe in the 18th Century to Mobile, New Orleans, and Biloxi, Mississippi, where I am familiar with it, having lived there for a few years.Make no mistake, you can't just walk into the white organizations, even if you are white. You have to have familial connections back to the origins of the city. It is a closed society made up of a lot of former slave owners. Brown weaves the story of slaves into her story of the city and the Mardi Gras traditions.It was an excellent peek into some of the traditions of the organizations, both black and white, and of the Mobile society.