My Brother's Wedding

After making his vibrant and momentarily celebrated, but ultimately under-recognized, student thesis film at UCLA called "Killer of Sheep," (which wasn't given a proper DVD release until late 2007, when music rights could finally be secured) young director Charles Burnett seemed to have a limitless amount of things to say about lower class marginalization and interpersonal relationships. Unlike his dramatic first feature, "My Brother's Wedding" is told as a lighthearted comedy, despite tackling issues like responsibility, generational disparity and class division.

Stark production values aside, the movie carries itself with an apparently effortless tone. Its hero is a good-hearted, but developmentally-arrested 30 year old man named Pierce, who lives with his parents, works at his family's dry-cleaning shop and feels somewhat betrayed by his lawyer brother when he decides to marry into a wealthy family. His old buddy Soldier is fresh out of prison and raising hell again, which is troubling to Pierce after he promised Soldier's mother to keep him out of trouble. The bittersweet story walks a fine line between its fluffy, heart-warming comedic bits and some very heavy plot elements with so much natural competancy that the film shifts into its dramatic scenes seamlessly.

One of my favorite scenes is indicative of the film's balance of comedy and hard truth, where Pierce's strong-willed mother stands up to two men who seemingly enter the shop to rob her. After they cautiously walk in and nervously eye the store, she impatiently yells, "If you got somethin' to do, you better well do it!" The strength in her voice sends the men sheepishly out of the store, and the scene concludes with both hilarity and poignancy.

Like "Killer of Sheep," the film chronicles its lower-class family over a series of days that are representative of the collective plights and joys of families in similar economic and social statuses. The ordinary home life of the films characters is painted in a realistic, but warm tone - similar to nostalgic works like Gene Saks' adaptation of "Brighton Beach Memoirs" or Robert Mulligan's "Man in the Moon." One falls in love with the characters and sympathizes with their predicaments, even when the low-budget production values and unprofessional acting get in the way.