If you're a stupid American like me, there's a good chance you can't place Saint Lucia on a globe—it's a relatively small, rugged paradise in the lower portion of the Caribbean, with a population that hovers around 180,000. The island nation also has a curious preoccupation with classic country music, owing to the installation of a US military base in the mid-20th century—a period that conveniently coincided with country's golden era.
This connection is deftly portrayed in Make Mine Country, an idiosyncratic documentary from Portland filmmaker Ian Berry. Berry eschews reliable pop-doc clichés in favor of a series of detached, candid snapshots of the island's natives performing, discussing, and listening to country. The opening shot of a woman and a boy at home, cooking and relaxing, reflexively singing along to country staple "You Done Me Wrong," is testament to Berry's success as a fly-on-the-wall documentarian—when the woman looks up during the song's final refrain and realizes that she's being recorded, she shoots the camera a sheepish, slightly irritated look.
