To Sleep With Anger: The Criterion Collection

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A slow-burning masterwork of the early 1990s, To Sleep With Anger, released on Blu-ray 25th March 2019 from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment as part of their Criterion Collection, is the third feature by Charles Burnett and a singular piece of American mythmaking.

In a towering performance, Danny Glover plays the enigmatic southern drifter Harry, a devilish charmer who turns up out of the blue on the South Central Los Angeles doorstep of his old friends. In short order, Harry's presence turns a seemingly peaceful household upside down, exposing smoldering tensions between parents and children, tradition and change, virtue and temptation.

Interweaving evocative strains of gospel and blues with rich, poetic-realist images, To Sleep with Anger is a sublimely stirring film from an autonomous artistic sensibility, a portrait of family resilience steeped in the traditions of black mysticism and folklore.