To Sleep with Anger

Danny Glover shows up at the door of his old friends and moves in. Over the next few weeks, a lot of stuff happens. Charles Burnett's movie seems to be a slice of life piece, showing the variety and contradictions of a small Black community, nominally in Los Angeles. There are tough guys and weak guys, but it's a solid working-class community where the choir sings polite gospel, and the preacher comes to visit the visit and chide them for using "old-fashioned" obeah cures instead of prayer. This isn't the world of rap or youth, but of the older, settled community. In some ways it seems idyllic, with no drug dealers or gang violence, the standard modern cinematic image of Black communities. There's no rap music, but there is the blues and a small boy playing a trumpet very loudly. It's warm and frequently silly, and beneath it is a had recognition of being unregarded. I found it very familiar, and if the older folks had been speaking Yiddish, i might have been, if not my own home growing up, then a cousin's, or that of one of my father's old friends.

Movies always are experienced differently. Depending on your own background and life experience you will see things different than and the other way around too. In this case someone not just from America, but also someone of color (not necessarily from that time period, but doesn't hurt) will have more insight on certain things than I did. Having said, there are many universal themes here, that anyone who grew up with more than just having his or her parents around will recognize. This is family time, this comprehensible for the majority. And the character studies in here ... the struggle, the pain, the connections, the dreams and the relationships all do feel quite "real". Danny Glover apparently was the one that helped the movie get of the ground - his Lethal Weapon fame came to good use. And he was not too old for that ... no pun intended. So if you are into family drama and no cliches about hoods and black on black crime - you will get a movie you will appreciate a lot.

Charles Burnett is the unsung vanguard of African-American cinema, who starts his career years before Spike Lee, yet whose output is far less prolific, TO SLEEP WITH ANGER is only his third feature, after KILLER OF SHEEP (1978) and MY BROTHER'S WEDDING (1983). The life of South Los Angeles inhabitants Gideon and Suzie (Butler and Alice) starts to unravel when an old friend from the South, Harry (Glover) blows in one day, out of hospitality and bonhomie, they invite Harry to stay as long as he wishes. After backhanded remarks questioning the philanthropic work of Gideon and Suzie's elder son Junior (Lumbly) and his wife Pat (McGee), who is gravid with a baby number two, Harry finds his perfect target in Gideon and Suzie's younger son Samuel aka. Baby Brother (Brooks), whose immaturity, trivial grievance and maladaptive fatherhood gives the access of Harry's macho, wheedling male-bonding of going back to the South, which brings tension between Baby Brother and his family, especially with his wife Linda (Ralph), who is haplessly juggling between her career and traditional drudgery assigned to a wife, child-rearing and domestic chores. Bad omen foreshadows Harry's arrival, the opening surreal self-combusted metaphor and the breaking of Gideon's charm all presage that it is a hostage to fortune to allow Harry overstaying his welcome. In Burnett's progressive thinking, there isn't much gray zone in the tradition versus urbanization tug-of-war, Harry, an incarnation of the vileness of a hidebound mindset (characterized by male chauvinism and superstition), is a menace with an elusive ulterior motive, and Danny Glover submerses deeply into Harry's dark side with a simian, hail-fellow-well-met expansiveness that is only betrayed by his piercing, menacing glint, shrouded in a mystical aura, he is mesmeric enough to hold our attention, but we have no idea what is he up to, because gradually Harry is reduced to a symbol, an unequivocal bad influence, which makes his comeuppance a bit blunt, if there is any redeeming feature in him, it is totally under our radar. Above all, TO SLEEP WITH ANGER is an ensemble piece, great performances are actualized, barring the top-billing Glover, also by its distaff players: Mary Alice, who is not just a devoted wife, a capable ob-gyn doctor, but also a witty and sensible mother, and knows how to live up to be the pillar of the household when the crunch befalls; Sheryl Lee Ralph, whose suffering wife of a man-child is mostly poignant, and Ethel Ayler, who plays Hattie, an old acquaintance whose newborn faith projects a searing antagonism against Harry even before he reveals his true colors. Good impression is dwindled on the man's front, Paul Butler's Gideon is taken to his bed most of the time, Carl Lumbly is prone to be an empty vessel (by making the most noise) and Richard Brooks has the juiciest role, but is squandered by a script which portrays him as the good-for-nothing every has to condone with. That said, TO SLEEP WITH ANGER deserves to be seen by a larger demography (it is a 4-times Independent Spirit winner if that doesn't mean nothing), for its steady deconstruction-and-reconstruction of familial bonds, for its unpretentious ethnic portrayal, and most prominently, for Burnett's unorthodox, pragmatic perspective on African-Americans' assimilation and adjustment in a modern society.

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source: To Sleep with Anger

Trailer—To Sleep with Anger

To Sleep with Anger

Or The Triumph Of The Black Yuppies. Did not care for it. Good performances from a wonderful ensemble cast saves it from utter perdition. C plus.

This was probably a nice night at the live theatre back in the day. And as a quiet movie with a killer music bed, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm grateful it got made at all. A movie about people. Real people. It certainly illustrates the massive talent of Danny Glover. I'm ashamed to say that as soon as I hear his name, those juvenile Lethal Weapon movies pop into my head. Yet as of this writing he's got more than 200 credits on IMDB, and appears to be busier than ever. Am I the only viewer who fell in love with Ethyl Ayler? I don't know whether it was the glorious white hair. The way she sang that torch song at the house party. Or just her general cheekiness. But that was one s3xy 59-year-old woman.

It's clear that this movie is rife with symbolism. The question is: what did it all mean? As for me, I don't know. A man named Harry (Danny Glover) whisks into town and it upsets the balance of the house he visited. He stopped by, presumably, to visit and his brief visit stretched into a long term stay. During that time he seemed to have a bad influence on everybody. Was he temptation? Was he the devil? Was he everything bad about back home (the South)? What was his goal, what was his motivation? Who knows. The movie started, some things happened, and the movie ended. That's what I got out of it all.