“You Never Know What’s in the Heart”: Charles Burnett’s TO SLEEP WITH ANGER
Upon its 1990 release, critic Dave Kehr praised Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger as “a film of tremendous vitality, sensitivity, insight, and, ultimately, mystery…It is impossible to leave this film without a sense of uplift; it glows.” Towing the line between domestic thriller, urban gothic, and metaphysical drama, the film weaves together modernity and tradition, realism and myth, the sinister and the sublime into a singular cinematic vision.
It arrived during a boom period for African American film, as major Hollywood studios, impressed by the breakthrough success of Spike Lee, showed new willingness to produce and distribute projects helmed by black artists and focused on black characters. The cast and crew boasted considerable bona fides. Director Charles Burnett already had one masterpiece under his belt, the poetic, neorealist landmark Killer of Sheep from 1977. Danny Glover, fresh off of Lethal Weapon 2 and at the height of his popularity, co-produced and starred, delivering a career-best performance.
Yet, To Sleep with Anger opened on only a handful of screens, did not recover its budget, and spent the next two decades in relative obscurity. Only in recent years, amid a growing cultural conversation about the contributions of black filmmakers, has it started to be recognized as one of the best films of its decade.
The film revolves around the household of Gideon and Suzie, and those of their two grown sons, Junior and Babe Brother. Long ago, they have left the South and made a life in Los Angeles, despite retaining some of their rural traditions. Unlike many screen depictions of urban black life during the 1990s, their neighborhood is not grim or crime-ridden, but middle-class and well kept, with a sense of community.
Still, the atmosphere seems unsettled. In a neighboring house, a boy warbles off-key notes on a trumpet. Pigeons flutter suddenly from a telephone wire. Untouched, a piece of china tumbles and smashes to pieces. And a shadow falls across the doorstep.
So arrives Harry Mention. Played by Glover, Harry is a drifter, a friend from the old days who brings with him many habits, customs, and memories from “down home.” He is gentlemanly, with an easy charm, but there is something sinister in his aspect. As he insinuates himself into the family’s lives, simmering resentments and inner discords are drawn to the surface and inflamed.
Who — or what — is Harry, and what is his purpose? Is he a grifter, a malevolent spirit, or an agent of confrontation, come to jolt the family members into facing their unresolved issues? When Suzie asks him if he is a friend, Harry looks toward the off-key trumpeter next door, saying, “If he was a friend, he would stop irritating people. But if he stops practicing, he wouldn’t be perfect at what he does someday.”
Indeed, as Burnett makes clear in the film’s fantastical opening, To Sleep With Anger has a foot in the otherworldly. In an interview with The Journal of American Folklore, Burnett notes Harry’s relation to a figure from Georgia folklore known as Hairy Man. “He will steal your soul. But it’s something you bargained with…you go out looking for something and are very vulnerable for whatever reason. And you run into this character and you unwittingly make this deal. The only way to get out of it is to out-trick this trickster…Harry is someone in between a real person and possibly this character of a Hairy Man.”
It is likely the film’s defiance of genre and refusal to offer easy explanations that baffled its studio distributor, who dismissed it as a curiosity, downplayed its release, and allowed it to fall into obscurity. Yet, in this era, wider audiences have started to find their way to this singular, stirring gem. To Sleep with Anger endures as a masterpiece by one of America’s great directors. Let it not be forgotten.
To Sleep with Anger plays at Bryn Mawr Film Institute on Thursday, August 22. Join us for a post-screening conversation with Vincent Williams and Len Webb of the stellar Philadelphia-based black film podcast The Micheaux Mission.
See you at the movies!
— Jacob Mazer, Special Programming Manager, BMFI
