To Sleep With Anger
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''To Sleep with Anger'' is a 1990 American
black comedy Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally ...
film written and directed by Charles Burnett, and starring
Danny Glover Danny Glover ( ; born July 22, 1946) is an American actor, producer, and political activist. Over his career he has received List of awards and nominations received by Danny Glover, numerous accolades including the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian A ...
. In 2017, the film was selected for preservation in the United States
National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation (library and archival science), preservation, each selected for its cultural, historical, and aestheti ...
by the
Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...
for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It had a remastered home media release from the
Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of arthouse film distributo ...
on February 26, 2019.


Plot

Gideon and his wife Suzie live in South Central Los Angeles (having moved there from the South years ago), where they spend time taking care of their grandson Sunny, as their son Samuel (also referred to as "Babe Brother") and his wife Linda each work during the day. One day, Harry, a longstanding friend from the South whom they have not seen for many years, makes a surprise visit. The couple are delighted to see him and insist that he stay with them for as long as he wishes. Harry has a charming, down-home manner, but his enigmatic and somewhat amoral presence brings trouble to a crisis that has been simmering in the family—especially as regards to the younger son, Samuel or "Babe Brother", and his relationships with his parents, wife and older brother, Junior. Harry's presence threatens to break up Samuel's marriage and seems to be related to an illness Gideon develops over the course of three weeks. On a stormy night, the clash between the two brothers, while Samuel merely sits and the others tend to Gideon, erupts in full; the result of their clash results in Suzie getting accidentally slashed in the hand that requires a visit to the hospital. Seemingly, the internal struggle that Samuel went through seems to wash away. The illness to Gideon proves ultimately purgative, though Harry's precise role remains ambiguous. Harry, in the midst of getting his things, slips on marbles that were accidentally dropped by Sunny and suffers a heart attack that leaves him dead on the kitchen floor for days.


Cast


Production

The genesis of the film came from director Charles Burnett's failure to make a film for PBS about a young girl killed by ironic events, believing that "Thinking that it’s not real, so if BShad any kind of input it wouldn’t be so tragic. I started to write it, and sent them different stages of it. And they brought in the same people, wanting to make it into their movie. The things that were cultural or specific about it, they wanted to take out. They wanted to make it “for the mainstream, so that everyone can understand it.” I said “that’s not the story; the story has to do with folklore, and the Black experience.” So we got into this huge argument again. So what the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—CPB—did was: they’d pay you after they approved a draft. You’d get involved with them, you’d get dependent on that check coming in, and they’d keep quizzing you on those changes. “Have you made those changes?” And you’d realize that the moment you made those changes, the check would come in the mail. Otherwise, you don’t get it. They don’t say it that way, but it comes out that way. So that became very difficult, and finally I said “I can’t make the changes that you want me to make; it’s not about that.” So we parted company, and they wrote a really nasty letter saying that I’m not a writer, and things like that. It was really awful! Then, this guy Cotty Chubb—he had been a friend of Michael Tolkin, who did The Player—called me out of the blue and said, “I hear you might be working on something; I’d like to see what you’re doing; I’m a producer.” I said “I have this script that no one wants,” and he said, “Bring it down.” So I dropped it off in his office." By the end of the movie, it had twelve producers behind it.


Reception

The film has received critical acclaim. On
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
, ''To Sleep with Anger'' holds a rating of 94% from 35 reviews, with an average score of 7.60/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "''To Sleep with Anger'' examines cultural tensions with a deft hand and a potent blend of comedy and drama, stirred skillfully to life by a strong cast led by Danny Glover." Chuck Bowen of ''
Slant Magazine ''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New Yor ...
'' called it a "neglected masterpiece of African-American cinema." '' IndieWires Brandon Wilson has called it Burnett's "other masterpiece," as well as numerous other favorable comparisons to '' Killer of Sheep'', saying "Like all great art, ''To Sleep With Anger'' triumphs because it works both on a personal level... and it is provocative enough thematically to fuel hours of discussion about tradition versus modernity and how it has affected African-Americans, for better or worse... urnetts asking us to think about the generation gap, Christian faith versus backwoods mysticism, the grip of the past versus the pull of the present, African-American yearning for financial prosperity versus our sense of altruism & duty and complications within both sides of each coin."
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert ( ; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American Film criticism, film critic, film historian, journalist, essayist, screenwriter and author. He wrote for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. Eber ...
, however, called it "too long" in a mixed review. ''
Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American online magazine, digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, ...
's'' Owen Glieberman called it "too ambitious" and said it "never finds a mood".


Accolades


References


External links

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''To Sleep with Anger: You Never Know What’s in the Heart''
an essay by Ashley Clark at the
Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of arthouse film distributo ...
{{Charles Burnett 1990 films 1990 black comedy films 1990 comedy-drama films 1990 independent films African-American comedy-drama films American black comedy films American independent films 1990s English-language films Films directed by Charles Burnett (director) Films scored by Stephen James Taylor Films set in Los Angeles Films shot in Los Angeles United States National Film Registry films 1990s American films Sundance Film Festival award–winning films English-language black comedy films English-language independent films