“This is the setup. But the telling is unhurried and in many cases unfinished. We are simply here among these people as they face life and what we mostly see are tableaux, verdant photographs of African beauty so profound and deeply rooted as to be nearly cosmic. The intermittent return to family portraits offers one framing device, but another is the voice of the as-of-yet unborn child offering observations from both the past and the future. In this film womb and ancestor are one, and as Eli wrestles with the fear that Eula’s child may not be his, and the subsequent inability to distinguish a symbol of love from a symbol of hate, family matriarch Nana reminds him that the question is not his to answer. The child has a voice of her own.” (more…)