"White River" is in fact "Seeds of Tragedy" A stunning, almost unknown, little gem of a film. Lhamar and Larenz Tate give spectacular performances in a staggering journey full of remarkable performances. The film starts in the Peruvian highlands where a very poor family survives collecting and selling coca leaves and ends in the streets of L.A with kids buying and selling crack. It sounds like a routine drug yarn but believe me it isn't. From the lyrical opening where poverty is wrapped in a veil of desperate hope to the closing where the hope is verbalized in a desperate cry for help. The look of the film is as if Caravaggio had made a documentary. The crack house is a terrifying figment of the filmmaker's imagination. The faces on the screen have all something in common as if they were all related somehow. The score changes with the film and is one of the most perfect marriages between dramatic images and music. The fact that this film is practically unknown is a mystery not me.
Review of The White River
