Brother to Brother, directed and written by Rodney Evans, is a biopic dedicated to the memory of Harlem Renaissance painter and poet Richard Bruce Nugent (played by Roger Robinson), who was born in 1906; his literary pseudonym was Richard Bruce. One day in 1987, a young African American painter, Perry Williams (played by Anthony Mackie) becomes acquainted with a robust eighty-year-old Nugent in Harlem; Perry works at a homeless shelter where Nugent sleeps. Soon serving as Perry's role model, Williams is able to imagine through Nugent's storytelling the excitement of the days in the 1920s when African Americans were proud to develop their own artistic identity. Through flashbacks, Perry hears about the aspirations of the artists, mostly writers, to tell their own stories in their own words. Nugent (portrayed in his 20s by Duane Boutte) was a lesser-known figure in the New Negro movement, which included Langston Hughes (played by Daniel Sunjata), Zora Neale Hurston (played by Aunjanue Ellis), Wallace Thurman (played by Ray Ford), and others. The group associated together in the same brownstone apartment which Nugent and Perry visit at one point in the film. However, the efforts of the Harlem Renaissance artists were not universally appreciated. One White publisher, wanting to make money by catering to the mainstream, insisted that what they published had to be changed to provide more crime, sex and violence, but they refused to sell out. The NAACP objected that their publication, Fire!!, should not be displayed by Black street vendors because the magazine portrayed gays and prostitutes, thus serving as an embarrassment to the organization, which was attempting to appeal to the mainstream (but, of course, the NAACP executive board was chaired by Whites until 1934). Indeed, Nugent and Thurman were both gay, as some graphic film footage attests (though Nugent married in 1952 and remained so until his wife died in 1969). Nugent also explains why the Harlem Renaissance ended: (1) Hughes moved out when Nugent allowed Thurman to publish two of his stories without giving him credit. (2)Thurman committed suicide. (3) The Great Depression devastated African Americans, whose culture was even blamed in some circles for the economic crisis. Meanwhile, Perry has problems of his own in the present. A Columbia University student, his father kicks him out of home on finding him having sex with another boy. A White college student (played by Alex Burns) is eager to treat him as a sex object but not as someone to love. A Black college student especially gets his goat by criticizing his effort to recognize James Baldwin (played in a pseudodocumentary by Lance Reddick) as a gay writer. And he is a victim of gaybashing by other Blacks. Both Nugent and Perry are alienated and homeless for different reasons, but they find joy in sharing themselves platonically. The ending, though too often seen in films that feature older gays, provides some poetic closure to the fascinating story. MH
I
want to comment on this film
