To Sleep with Anger

Charles Burnett
,
US
,
1990
,
35mm
,
colour
,
101'

At first we seem to be in an acutely observed middle-class soap opera, witnessing the generational disputes between the family patriarch (Paul Butler) and his wife (Mary Alice), and their two married sons (Richard Brooks and Carl Lumbly) … Enter Harry (Danny Glover), a smiling charmer from the old days in the Deep South.... Is Harry in fact an evil spirit, setting a curse upon the house? … Glover, in what may be the best role of his film career, makes him an unforgettable trickster, both frightening and a little pathetic … a catalyst to explore the conflicting systems of belief — Christian, magical, materialistic — that collide throughout the movie.” — David Ansen, Newsweek