The Work of a Poet

Maya Angelou is a woman of many talents: poet, actor, and now film
director. But it is always the poet that informs everything else she
does, and DOWN IN THE DELTA is a shining example of this.

Despite the range of settings, from the gritty streets of the south
side of Chicago to the rural landscape of Mississippi, This film has a
lyrical quality that is all the more remarkable when you realize that
Angelou did not write the script, though one senses that screenwriter
Myron Goble at the very least consulted with her.

For a first-time effort by a woman who is really not a movie director,
this is an astonishing film: it is true, it is real, and every emotion
comes through clearly.

This is largely due to an extraordinary cast. The great Alfre Woodard
plays Loretta, a woman who is drowning the difficulties of life in the
Chicago ghetto with drink and, on occasion, drugs, though at this point
she appears to be self-medicating occasionally and is at least partly
kept in check by her mother Rosa Lynn (Mary Alice in yet another
stunning performance), who makes sure she feeds her young, autistic
daughter (though Loretta's response to this is to add cola to the milk
in the child's bottle), and encourages her to find work, though she
does so gently and stops short of nagging, until one day when Loretta,
after an abortive attempt to secure a job as a supermarket cashier,
heads for the nearest liquor store and buys a bottle, and in the next
scene she appears to be in a drug house. Rosa Lynn is pushed beyond her
endurance, and picks up the phone and calls her brother-in-law Earl (Al
Freeman Jr in what just might be the performance of his career) down in
Mississippi; her idea is to get Loretta and the kids out of there for
the summer in the hope that reconnecting with her family and its
history will bring her out of the funk she's in. She then informs her
daughter that she has two choices: go stay with Earl for the summer or
have her kids taken away. Frightened, Loretta listens to her mother,
something we get the impression she has made a habit of not doing
lately.

To finance the journey, Rosa Lynn pawns an antique silver candelabra
that everyone refers to as "Nathan." Even Loretta is sober enough to be
shocked by her mother's actions; the candelabra has been in the family
since the Civil War, and the pawnshop gives her until September to
redeem it or it will be sold. Rosa Lynn buys bus tickets and ships her
wayward daughter and the kids off to her brother-in-law, with whom she
has been arguing over ownership of "Nathan" for years but who
nonetheless agrees to take Loretta and the kids. Because they're family
and that is all the reason he needs.

Arriving at Earl's Mississippi Delta home, Loretta and the kids meet
Uncle Earl for the first time. They also meet aunt Annie (Esther
Rolle), Earl's wife, who is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, a
situation that provides the film with added poignancy and a little bit
of gentle comedy. The film does not make fun of Alzheimer's but the way
the family deals with Annie's occasional difficult behavior are amusing
without being in the least offensive.

Rounding out the remarkable cast are Loretta Devine as the family
maid/nurse to Annie, Mpho Koaho as Loretta's son Thomas, and Wesley
Snipes and Anne-Marie Johnson as Earl's lawyer son Will and his
somewhat snooty wife Monica.

The visit proves to be cathartic for the entire family in so many ways
that they are too numerous to list here, and the revelations that come
in the film's denouement are heart-wrenching.

The performances all around are magnificent, but at the end of the day
this is largely Woodard's film: she is the character with the most to
lose at the beginning, and at the end she has grown into a
self-actualized woman who believes in herself and for the first time
has hope for the future.

The film culminates with Rosa Lynn coming down South and bringing with
her the candelabra. By this time, she has told her daughter the entire
history of the candelabra and what it has meant to the family, and she
and her brother-in-law bury the hatchet when he hands the candelabra to
Loretta and says that it is rightfully hers. Loretta's response is to
return it to its rightful place on the mantelpiece.

This is a movie with a big heart. There's a lot of love in this family,
and it is that love that heals the wounds they have suffered.

The film also has an extraordinary sense of place, despite the fact
that the exteriors were shot in Toronto, Ontario; nowhere near the
Mississippi Delta.

Made on a modest budget (shooting in Toronto was a way to save money),
this movie tells its story better than a good many movies that cost ten
times as much to make.

Pay a visit to the Delta. You will be moved by it.



Never mess with a middle-aged, Bipolar queen with AIDS and an attitude problem!
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