With Sufjan Stevens just one twenty-fifth of the way through his plan to release a series of concept albums corresponding to each of the United States, John Sayles remains the best hope for a comprehensive overview of our neighbour to the south. In the 28 years since Return of the Secaucus Seven, the Schenectady-born writer/director/editor/indie-godhead — whom law mandates must be praised for making films “on his own terms” at least once per magazine profile — has cut a thoughtful swath from sea to shining sea, from Harlem (The Brother From Another Planet) to West Virginia (Matewan) to Texas (Lone Star) to Florida (Sunshine State) and most points in between (with stopovers in South America for Men With Guns and Casa de los Babys).

“I’d never made anything in what I would consider to be the Deep South,” says Sayles in an interview conducted last fall at the Toronto International Film Festival, referring to his new film Honeydripper — an ensemble drama/blues-inflected musical set in 1950s Alabama. “I had been thinking about the continuum from blues to rhythm and blues to rock ’n’ roll, and I knew that if I were to make a movie [about that] it would have to happen close to where the blues started, in the cotton fields.”

Honeydripper unfolds in the small town of Harmony: the name is ironic — in a slightly-too-writerly sort of way — as the inhabitants are organized along a clear racial divide. The script stays primarily on the black side of that line: the title refers to a failing edge-of-town lounge managed by Tyrone (Danny Glover), a spent force facing down competition from a neighbouring juke joint and the wrath of his creditors. He’s all but posted an “out of business” sign when salvation quite literally wanders onto the scene in the form of a handsome young drifter (Gary Clark Jr.) carrying an electric guitar.

 Even by Sayles’ typically laconic standards (his has never been a cinema of velocity), Honeydripper is in no hurry to tell its story, and there are moments where the audience is several plot points ahead of the characters. But the relaxed pacing has its virtues, too, allowing time to savour the uniformly fine performances (Glover has some great scenes with Charles S. Dutton, playing his sympathetic best pal) and Dick Pope’s sumptuous cinematography (this is Sayles’ best-looking movie in a long time). If the various character arcs and narrative developments feel stagy (the clearly delineated two-act structure gives it the feeling of a play) the way the soundtrack charts a 20th-century musical evolution is rather novel.

“[The film] starts with some ’20s-style, Ma Rainey music,” notes Sayles. “Then we hear some gospel and Hank Williams singing ‘Move It on Over,’ which is proto-rockabilly. We have all the elements that went into rock ’n’ roll, and the last element is this kid with a solid-body guitar and a drummer behind him. And if you’re a student of music, you can hear that the drummer starts with a shuffle for a few bars before getting into a backbeat… that progression is sort of the spine of the movie.”

Sayles has used music evocatively before; recall the 17-year-old Will Oldham’s crooning in Matewan, or the zydeco inflections on the Passion Fish soundtrack. But Honeydripper’s integration of pop history and political history — the choice of Alabama as a locale is not coincidental, nor is a fleeting but pointed reference to civil rights pioneer A. Philip Randolph — goes deeper than anything he’s ever attempted. So too does its immersion in African-American culture, though this is hardly the first time that Sayles — oftentimes a maker of ethnic mosaics (see: City of Hope, Lone Star) — has had to field questions about being a white artist communicating black experience.
“[Writing black characters] is something I’ve always felt comfortable doing,” he says. “I grew up in a very mixed background as far as race and class go — not only in high school, but also in various jobs that I’ve had. I did Brother From Another Planet, which was almost all black characters, and also Eight Men Out, which has only one black character — because you know baseball in the period when that film is set [1919] was segregated.”

It would be facile to suggest that a filmmaker as clear-eyed as Sayles is advocating colour-blindness as a worldview, but he does note with some amusement that Honeydripper’s structuring absence — the legendary, nomadic axe-man Guitar Sam, whom Tyrone books for a club-saving gig despite the fact that he doesn’t necessarily exist — finds its roots in the director’s childhood confusion about a favourite musician.

“I didn’t know that Chuck Berry was black for six years,” Sayles says. “He was singing about cars and the guys I knew who were into cars were white guys. I figured Chuck Berry looked like Duane Eddy.”

The idea of an apocryphal pop star whose identity could be assumed by anybody at any time (or just in time for a rousing final number) is sweetly nostalgic in an age of overexposed stars; Honeydripper’s pleasures are similarly old-school.