Critics reviews

Burnett’s direction is masterfully confident dealing with his actors, who inhabit the narrative’s domestic spaces with aplomb... Glover’s performance is nothing short of brilliant.

His stories, told from a perspective that’s still sorely lacking in American cinema, wrestle with the dark allure of more old-fashioned times without feeling didactic. To Sleep With Anger lingers long after you’ve watched it and only deepens with repeat viewings...

To Sleep With Anger is foremost a film dedicated to capturing the nuances of real-world intimacy. "Why don't you shut the door and come on over here?" Gideon, smiling wide and patting the bed, says to Suzie. She stares at him silently and exits the room to tend to their grandson — but softens her rebuff with a knowing wink. This brief scene communicates, better than many films devoted solely to the subject, the delights and disappointments of enduring unions.

Burnett sketches the details of the lives of Gideon and his family, bridging theatrical dialogue, portentous omens, and presentational acting with a grace that's so masterful as to appear effortless, capturing enough life and subtext for several films.

Burnett maintains a gentle, ingratiating surface tone (rooted in a sense of deep affection for all his characters, no matter how small) while hashing out a variety of complex subjects—such as black social mobility and certain urban African-Americans' alienation from cultural traditions—and subtly introducing an air of dread. And Danny Glover, who plays Harry, has never been better.

At least as many movie greats have been ignored by the Academy's voters as have been recognized, but there are bar bets to be won on the question of whether Danny Glover has ever been nominated for an Oscar. The answer is no, unfortunately, and in Charles Burnett's 1990 film "To Sleep with Anger" Glover gives a performance for the ages that, apparently, wasn't deemed good enough for the year.

[I]n Charles Burnett’s 1990 film “To Sleep with Anger” Glover gives a performance for the ages...

Burnett creates a fulsome community of saints and sinners, chicken coops and pigeon cages, gold watches and rabbit's feet—a colorful gumbo of African-American life that was rare to see on screens in 1990 and that remains all too rare to this day.

There are layers of African-American history and heartbreak in this near classic of generational conflict and the West African sense of community that proved strong enough to survive even slavery.

Despite uncertain pacing, Burnett's evocation of a thriving cultural milieu that embraces both superstition and mysterious wisdom is almost flawless.

Burnett's Renoiresque/Chekhovian humanist genius reaches a peak with To Sleep with Anger: Every character is a protagonist, each with their own reasons... The film is loaded with supernatural rituals and black magic, yet just as Buñuel's dream sequences abjure camera tricks and special effects for a far more haunting surface naturalism, Burnett never shows any puffs of smoke or mumbo-jumbo B-movie visions of evil. We remain grounded in the real.

This is a thoroughly worthwhile revisiting of an intelligent movie which avoids stereotyping, but I have to say I found it oddly reticent and cumbersome in its slow and steady pace