A man who has struggled personally has conflicts with his lawyer brother
and his fiancé and is reluctant to be the best man at their wedding DRAMA
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My Brother's Wedding (1983)Written and Directed by Charles Burnett
Starring Everett Silas, Jessie Holmes, Gaye Shannon-Burnett, Ronnie Bell, Dennis Kemper |
I recently wrote a review for Bless Their Little Hearts which completely rocked my world. My Brother’s Wedding is a film that came out just a year prior to Bless Their Little Hearts and it’s a product from the mind of Charles Burnett. He wrote and shot Bless Their Little Hearts. Burnett is one of the most prominent figures in the black independent film world and his work is really difficult to find but it’s so damn rewarding. The blaxploitation era of the 70’s brought a lot of black actors to the big screen but it was guys like Burnett who desired to tell authentic and raw stories about black people in America.
My Brother’s Wedding opens up with a powerful bluesy track as we are introduced to the main character, Pierce Mundy. He lives in Los Angeles, has no future plans, and doesn’t want to attend his brother's wedding as his best man because he doesn’t like his fiancé. His family doesn’t like his friends, especially his buddy who he picks up from jail named Soldier. Pierce goes about life with a realistic yet depressing view. He knows he’s going to come up short before a situation ever unfolds. There’s so much but so little in My Brother’s Wedding as Pierce is roaming around LA with almost nothing to lose due to his mindset. Charles Burnett’s style as a director is extremely patient and unforgiving due to its honesty about daily life in real neighborhoods. Everett Silas provides an astonishing performance as Pierce who is a kind of character that desperately needs more representation in modern films. I’m very grateful to have stumbled upon Bless Their Little Hearts because it opened me up to My Brother’s Wedding and black independent films from the 80’s are definitely on my radar now. |