November 16, 1990 | During the opening seconds of To Sleep With Anger, a middle-aged, sturdily-built black man, all decked out in his Sunday best, sits on a cane chair near a table topped with a bowl of fruit. On the wall behind him, there is a large photograph of a dignified lady in period attire, suggesting that he, too, is posing for a portrait of some sort. Maybe. But there’s something about his pose, something about the whole scene, that isn’t quite right.
And then, for no apparent reason, the bowl of fruit bursts into flames.
The man isn’t visibly startled by the sudden conflagration. In fact, he literally twiddles his thumbs, idly, as though spontaneous combustion in fruit bowls were a common household occurrence. He remains calm, his expression remains immobile, even when flames start to rise from his white shoes.
The scene, ominous and yet strangely comical, sets the tone for everything that follows in To Sleep With Anger, a quietly unsettling film that finds dark portents and hints of the supernatural in the seemingly commonplace. On its simplest level, director Charles Burnett’s screenplay is the story of a family pressured by long-simmering animosities, and nearly destroyed by a beguiling visitor. What makes the film even more complex, and often very funny, is the suggestion that this visitor is an emissary from hell, or at least a demon with a questionable sense of humor.
The vision of burning fruit is a daydream of Gideon (Paul Butler), the aging patriarch of a Deep South family that resettled many years ago in South Central Los Angeles. Gideon, who is retired, and Suzie (Mary Alice), his wife, have held on to many of their old-fashioned ways. He raises chickens in the backyard, and tells tall tales of drunken preachers and hellbound sinners to his wide-eyed grandson. She is a practicing midwife who teaches natural-childbirth classes.
Their grown sons, Junior (Carl Lumbly) and Babe Brother (Richard Brooks), take very different views of the customs and beliefs that are their family heritage. Junior remains close to his parents, despite some broad hints that he feels his upbringing was too strict by half. Babe Brother and Linda (Sheryl Lee Ralph), his real-estate broker wife, are upwardly mobile types with little regard for traditions. They’re quick to use Gideon and Suzie as all-hours babysitters. But Babe Brother never seems to have the time to help his parents fix their leaky roof.
As To Sleep With Anger begins, there’s a great deal of bottled-up rage just beneath the surface calm. The title refers to conventional wisdom — you should never go to sleep angry, never allow resentments to simmer overnight — that Gideon and his family have unwisely ignored. All it takes to stir things up is the unexpected arrival of a visitor from “back home,” Harry Mention (Danny Glover).
At first, Harry seems to be nothing more dangerous than a roguish charmer. Soft-spoken and unfailingly polite, he announces he is just passing through on his way to San Francisco. Gideon and Suzie invite him to stay as long as he wants. This is a big mistake.
In no time at all, Harry is bringing out the worst in people, grinning and joshing even as he says the rudest, scariest things. Over a friendly game of cards with Babe Brother, he indicates that, yes, he reckons he remembers at least one time when he had to kill a man. Later, when he meets Hattie (Ethel Ayler), a former girlfriend who’s now a born-again Christian, Harry indelicately reminds her, and anyone else within earshot, of her wild youth.
During a party, someone says Harry once killed a black man, then made it look like the work of a white lynch mob. Harry doesn’t deny the charge. But he suggests that good things, maybe even necessary things, might very well result from wicked deeds.
Harry has no idea how right he is. And that’s just one of the ironies to be enjoyed in To Sleep With Anger, a modern-day folk tale with a playful wit and an undercurrent of dread. Harry may be a figure straight out of African-American mythology, the trickster who delights in bringing confusion to mortals. Or he may just be a conniving old cuss who loves to manipulate folks for the sheer mean-spirited fun of it. Either way, his magic is potent, but not nearly as strong as his own superstitious fears.
Writer-director Charles Burnett, an independent filmmaker here making his first mainstream splash, was born in Vicksburg, Miss., but raised in the Watts area of Los Angeles. His intimacy with both rural and urban strains of black American life serves him well in To Sleep With Anger — the film abounds with sharply-observed, thoroughly persuasive details and tasty colloquial humor. Ultimately, Burnett comes down on the side of tradition, at least in terms of traditional family values, but warns that reconnecting with your roots can be a mixed blessing. Babe Brother can break away from Harry’s insinuating spell only by renewing his family ties. But Harry Mention — or, to be more precise, the malevolence he represents — is very much a part of the traditions that Gideon and Suzie cherish so dearly.
Danny Glover is mesmerizing as Harry, at once gleefully gregarious and subtly sinister, brandishing his down-home charm like a stiletto. Harry professes to be a simple, unassuming fellow, even though he quotes Pushkin now and then, but the pose is never entirely convincing. And, sure enough, when Gideon is incapacitated, Harry assumes command of the household with the self-assured ease of a benevolent tyrant. All Glover has to do is show us the impudence on Harry’s face as he trims his toenails in the parlor. That’s enough to make the audience start sniffing the air for sulfur and brimstone.
Glover is first among equals in a large, immensely talented ensemble cast that also includes Vonetta McGee as Junior’s pregnant wife, and Davis Roberts as Harry’s favorite crony from the old days. To Sleep With Anger is a film of impressive originality and imagination, and it brings out the best in everybody involved.
