The third film from husband and wife directing team Jeremy and Kara Choate, Salt of the Earth is a spellbinding and grisly look at daily life after the world we know collapses. How the world collapsed is of no consequence to the family followed in Salt of the Earth. Rather, the daily lives of the good people in rural Oklahoma are what matter to the film.
Salt of the Earth opens with Rita (Kate Jones) striking a bargain with one of the militia detachments still active. Ivan (Ryker Sixkiller) wants as many generators as Rita can beg, borrow, or steal. He’s prepared to pay in this post-apocalyptic forest 1000 dollars for each generator found. For Rita, who’s the crime boss of this podunk town, she struck gold with this deal.
Complicating Rita’s ability to make a profit is her family. Elton (Adam Hampton) is the local cop policing the area. His deputy is Alice (Mary Buss), who is a no-nonsense woman of action. Elton’s son David (Ian Walker) seems a good kid, even if his addicted to pills. He works at the local general store for the ancient Georgia (Rita Scranton). It’s at Georgia’s general store that Rita finds the generators necessary to make good on her business arrangement with Ivan. If only David hadn’t pulled that fire alarm, incentivizing Rita to punish him most grievously.
“This is a lawless land. No matter how hard Elton tries to maintain order…”
To further frustrate the characters of Salt of the Earth, Rita and Elton’s youngest brother, Kicker (Harrison Higdon) is not only a baby-faced killer. Kicker, while trying to break into a junkyard, was bitten by a rabid dog. At this point in the collapse, medicine is scarce. There are no antibiotics to be found anywhere. To punish David for idiotically pulling the burglar alarm, Rita punishes him by sticking him in the garage with the decidedly frothy-mouthed and aggressively nasty Kicker. David will be bit.
And that, dear reader, is where Salt of the Earth’s story takes off. Salt of the Earth is a languidly paced movie with tremendous acts of jarring violence. A shootout that erupts between the militia and an extended clan of scavengers feels perfectly positioned in the awful, crooked, and ultra-violent countryside of rural Oklahoma. This is a lawless land. No matter how hard Elton tries to maintain order, it breaks apart on him constantly. Watching him struggle against a world determined to eat itself is one of the pleasures of Salt of the Earth.
With Salt of the Earth, the Choates manage to craft a fine and damning fable of the near future. I haven’t seen their prior efforts, dear reader. I may seek them out now. This is a beautiful expression of the age-old lesson from script writing 1: “Simple story/complex characters”. The story of a father hunting for his missing son is the heart of Salt of the Earth. Indeed, one could contend Elton is the really great and humble man you would describe as the Salt of the Earth. I am quite enamored of this effort, dear reader.
So, if you’re in the market for a post-apocalyptic tale that’s heavy on realism and light on science fiction, seek out Salt of the Earth. It’s well worth it to find it wherever it may be released.
"…a fine and damning fable of the near future."
