To Sleep With Anger Rated: PG. There is no violence or profanity. Still this is a very adult film. Small children will be bored silly. Genre: Drama. Time: 1 hour 42 minutes Released: 1990 Directed by: Charles Burnett Starring: Paul Butler, Devaughn Walter Nixon, Mary Alice, Reina King, Cory Curtis, Richard Brooks (II), Sheryl Lee Ralph, Carl Lumbly, Vonetta McGee, Danny Glover, Davis Roberts The call: An excellent, if slightly odd, film. Well worth renting and seeing with a few friends. Availability: Available on videotape and laserdisc.

My recommendation for your viewing pleasure this time is Charles Burnett's To Sleep With Anger, starring Danny Glover. If it makes you feel better, you might want to know that it was named one of the year's 10 best films in 1990 by Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Our story is set in South Central Los Angeles, though one that looks very different than the one movie audiences generally see on the screen. Instead of guns, drugs and mean streets, we have Gideon (played by Paul Butler) a strict, but rather kind-hearted family man and Suzie (Mary Alice), an equally strict and kind-hearted family woman. While their bodies are smack in the middle of the suburban prettiness of modern-day South Central LA, their hearts are definitely somewhere in the Deep South of my mother's time. They clutch to old ways, tending gardens, raising chickens and minding the sayings and superstitions.

They have two children, whom they have raised in these customs and beliefs. Junior (Carl Lumbly) embraces these beleifs, but Babe Brother (Richard Brooks) finds the mores and values of Buppiedom to be more seductive. There is tension and resentment here, but it is mainly under the surface.

The tension and resentment remain under the surface until Harry Mention (Danny Glover) arrives one day out of the blue to visit his long-ago friends. Full of old stories--and a few other things--Harry is the catalyst that awakens the anger that has been sleeping in the family.

The acting in this film is excellent all around. Most notable is Danny Glover, of course, but Richard Brooks also does an amazing job as the self-absorbed and resentful youngest son.

Most folks have never heard of To Sleep With Anger. That's too bad, because it is an excellent film. Some of my friends found it to be a bit confusing on the first viewing, but I think that's because half the film seems to take place in Mississippi while the other half seems to take place in downtown L.A. That's not what's going on. Almost all the action takes place in a single house in South Central. It's just that this house lives in two different worlds.

Give To Sleep With Anger a good look-see next time you're in the video store. Afterwards, let me know what you think Harry Mention really represents.

         "I don't believe in sin, but there's the good and the evil...
          and evil's something you have to work at." 

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