A beautiful town haunted by its own racism gets its close-up in 'Natchez'

In the 1930s, the achromatic matriarchs of tiny Natchez, Miss. — 1 of the 19th century’s wealthiest American towns acknowledgment to the slavery-driven fabric commercialized — opened their stately antebellum mansions to prevention themselves from economical ruin. Tourism dollars flowed in, adjacent if the prettified Southern past being sold ignored the immoral plague that built its riches successful the archetypal place.

By turns cheeky and disturbing, blunt and nuanced, Suzannah Herbert’s fantabulous documentary “Natchez” offers its ain guided circuit of a memory-challenged assemblage (population: 14,000) struggling to reconcile its exquisite, cautiously scrubbed façade with the inconvenient truths immoderate would similar to spot amended represented successful the narrative.

That longstanding erasure has made Natchez a little commercially affable imaginable to younger generations of visitors. And meaningful advancement turns retired to beryllium overmuch harder than simply refashioning an grounds oregon a docent’s spiel.

Can a spot similar Natchez — location to some a cherished tourer pageantry called the Pilgrimage and the enslaved marketplace tract called Forks of the Road — find a harmonious beingness betwixt its green-and-serene sightseeing pleasures and its unspeakable past? Its optimistic politician seems to deliberation so, if the archetypal country is immoderate indication, successful which helium exalts a “new Natchez” astatine a spirited ladies’ luncheon held by the tour-umbrella association, the Garden Club, and featuring that group’s archetypal Black member, Deborah Cosey.

Cosey, we learn, runs Concord Quarters, a burned-down plantation’s past remaining building, which erstwhile housed its enslaved. (She besides lives there.) Centering the enactment and lives of these forgotten souls is simply a ngo she sees arsenic telling “the remainder of the story.” In 1 tense country with her achromatic colleagues, Cosey winces astatine their mentation of humanities enlightenment — the reclamation task is moving astatine a horse-drawn carriage’s pace.

The large location is inactive the main show, antiquated customs and preserved finery inactive the plot, adjacent arsenic immoderate of these hosting descendants, faced with declining revenues, grasp that there’s an expanding awkwardness to the “Gone With the Wind” story they’re peddling. Meanwhile, charming and knowledgeable Black pastor Tracy “Rev” Collins offers a lively van circuit (“See the real Mississippi”), an acquisition world cheque astir slavery’s bequest laced with witty asides.

The disagreement gets much analyzable erstwhile the documentary trails openly cheery seasoned Garden Club subordinate David Garner, whose foundation enactment benefiting the LGBTQ+ assemblage would look to constituent to an aged world’s shifting tolerance. But erstwhile this outlier’s intensely Southern-fried circuit patter reveals a chillingly deep-seated racism, it slaps you close backmost into sobriety astir Natchez’s roots — a neo-Confederate mindset that doesn’t attraction if a camera is determination to grounds it.

“Natchez” is afloat of softly charged moments successful dreamily scenic surroundings, 1 effect of Noah Collier’s lush cinematography, deployed similar a deliberately performative nostalgia that lets america cognize there’s ever much to spot if we look (and listen) intimately enough. This stylistic attack allows Herbert to expertly debar inadvertently selling Natchez itself, alternatively focusing connected however this town’s peculiar narration to an overwhelming past inactive lives wrong those doing the selling.