My Brother’s Wedding

(Charles Burnett, USA, 1983)

In Charles Burnett’s career, My Brother’s Wedding has received far less attention than Killer of Sheep (1977). But it is almost as arresting. Particularly in that – like the Criterion presentation of John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976/1978) – it comes in two, very different edits, the original of 1983 and the re-cut of 2007.

There is a full 37-minute variation in running times. And the newer version is not only extremely shorter and tighter (another sign of Burnett’s general speeding-up as a director) but, at certain points, digitally reframed: it is fascinating to judge what Burnett thought was worth removing from certain images to literally focus his point better.

My Brother’s Wedding does not have the elegiac, tragic air of Killer of Sheep, but it does have the same teeming life. With its proud use of non-professional actors (although someday we are going to have to ban this dreadful term non-professional) and its loopy dialogue – “He’s got the neuralgia. I guess that means he wants me to send him some money” – I found myself free-associating to the 1980s collaborations between Paul Morrissey and playwright Alan Bowne, such as Forty Deuce (1982) and Mixed Blood (1985).

Since it is something of a comedy (but with disturbing, surprising swerves), My Brother’s Wedding has a curious (and perhaps unintended) relation to films of both the 1970s Car Wash ilk and the Friday franchise (1995- ). And in its central plot premise – the friendship between Pierce (Everett Silas), a passive guy who still works for his folks, and the flakey, unpredictable, uncontrollable Soldier (Ronnie Bell) – it evokes the male relationship at the heart of a key and much-imitated film of the ‘70s, Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973). But with a special, Southern focus.

This lateral connection between Burnett and some of the better-known works of American cinema in the ‘70s is prolonged by his haunting, elliptical short The Horse (1973) included on the Milestone DVD of Killer of Sheep – which could almost have been a vignette from Terrence Malick’s contemporaneous Badlands (1973).

MORE Burnett: Nightjohn, The Blues

© Adrian Martin April 2008