THE ORDER OF MYTHS

There's nothing post-race about the closely orbiting worlds depicted in The Order of Myths, Margaret Brown's wise and soberly affecting documentary about the separate but unequal Mardi Gras festivities that take place each year in Mobile, Alabama. Though the city's Web site discreetly sidesteps the issue, this Mardi Gras, the oldest in the country - probably inaugurated by soused French settlers in 1703 - is almost entirely segregated between the children of slave owners and the children of slaves, whose celebrations, coronations, parades and pleasures are as divided as are their views on race. (...) Brown has traveled into Mobile's slave-trading past and taken the unquiet pulse of its current race relations, going wide and surprisingly deep. With the aid of a handful of essential Mardi Gras players - notably the 2007 white king and queen and their equally engaged black counterparts - she has observed the costume fittings, a wine tasting, some party toasting. Eschewing voice-over or any obvious trace of an on-screen or off-screen presence, she lets her images, a little text and other people do the talking for her. Her quiet has its own force. (Manohla Dargis)