My Brother’s Wedding
Director: Charles Burnett. Screenplay: Charles Burnett. Cinematography: Charles Burnett. Film editing: Thomas Penick. Producers: Charles Burnett, Gaye Shannon-Burnett. With: Everett Silas, Jessie Holmes, Gaye Shannon-Burnett, Ronnie Bell, Dennis Kemper. USA. 81 min. 1982.
By David Sterritt
Although he’s rarely gotten the critical attention and commercial success he richly deserves, Charles Burnett is one of today’s leading African-American filmmakers. This comedy-drama isn’t as daring as his 1977 tone poem “Killer of Sheep” or as ingratiating as his 1990 tour de force “To Sleep with Anger,” but it’s definitely his funniest feature, and also one of his most serious. The main character is a conflicted working-class man who simultaneously resents and envies his yuppie brother, who’s a lawyer, and acts out his nervous anxieties by hanging out with an ex-con who’s his only real friend; eventually his emotional balancing act comes to a crisis, and he has to make a choice—at once highly symbolic and profoundly human—between attending the wedding of one person close to him or the funeral of another.
Burnett faced all sorts of stumbling blocks with this production, which was hit by everything from uncooperative weather to a disappearing act by a key cast member. The picture’s coproducer, a German television outlet, insisted that Burnett deliver the film on schedule despite these problems, so he rushed an assembly to them, hoping to complete a fine cut in the near future. The rough edition was then accepted by the prestigious New Directors/New Films festival at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, received a lukewarm review in the New York Times, and landed in distribution limbo.
Almost a quarter-century later, the admirable folks at Milestone Films have sprung into action on Burnett’s behalf, releasing a freshly reedited cut, which Burnett tells me is “the version that should have been,” to theaters. Milestone is also distributing both this director’s cut and the 1983 cut, restored by the Pacific Film Archive, in a DVD box set, along with “Killer of Sheep” and some of Burnett’s short films. Now is the time to discover the subtly observational, exquisitely nuanced cinema of a brave and original film artist.
