Film Critic Review from Willamette Week, the Pulitzer Prize-winning alternative weekly newspaper of Portland, Oregon.
"A TRIUMPH OF OUTRAGE AND EMPATHY"
St. Augustine, Florida, isn't a town primarily associated with the civil rights movement, but in 1964 it was selected by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as the site of crucial marches and a swim-in.
Black and white demonstrators flocked to the segregated beaches (yes, even the Atlantic Ocean was off-limits in the South if your skin was the wrong color) and jumped into the pool of the Monson Motel, where the enraged owner was photographed dumping muriatic acid into the water to force them out.
It is a measure of the wisdom of Jeremy Dean's documentary that it tracks down that motel proprietor, James Brock and finds not a frothing-at-the-mouth racist but a sad, benighted man who snapped, never quite understanding that the waters around him had grown. Dare Not Walk Alone is full of such revelations.
It is a powerhouse of a picture, minutely attuned to disparities of class and race and even infrastructure: Two years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the city leaders of St. Augustine built the highway exits off Interstate 95, and neglected to add one leading into African-American neighborhoods. Dean explores the resultant disaster that is West St. Augustine, a place that looks closer to Haiti than Orlando.
The movie, gracefully scored with local hip-hop and gospel recordings, is a triumph of outrage and empathy.
AARON MESH
© 2007 Willamette Week