Straight Out of Brooklyn

A REALISTIC DRAMA ABOUT DESTITUTION and violence in today's Black America, shot on location in Brooklyn, New York. Ray Brown is a black man who's had an underpaid job for many years. He accuses the White population of preventing him from giving his family the necessities of life. He drinks too much and takes out his anger and hopelessness on his wife Frankie, who, despite the humiliating treatment, continues to struggle to keep the family together. Dennis, their son, is planning a risky robbery in order to save them from the hopeless situation and to take them ''straight out of Brooklyn ''.
Comment:
BROOKLYN IS NOT ONLY AS MANY BELIEVE, Brooklyn Heights, a fashionable residential area with a clear view of Manhattan. Neither is it predominantly cosy suburbs, where all dogs are named Spot and families live in an eternal, curious mix of a 50s and 70s idyllic atmosphere and go to the disco every Saturday. Brooklyn is as diversified as Manhattan and has bigger and poorer slums. The action in this film takes place in one of the worse, a city owned housing project for people of lesser means - Red Hook. But, you can catch a glimpse of Manhattan from Red Hook, too.
Ray Brown blows up at his son at the beginning of the film ''What the hell do you know about being black? Tell me what you know!'' Dennis' experience is put against his father's; the young, not yet subjugated life, against resignation, self-hatred and bitterness. But Dennis has a far more difficult task than liberating himself from his father. In his liberation he has to make up with all of Afro-American history. The father-son conflict stands for the radical settlement young Black America has to make with their different generations.
The young director Matty Rich adds a new dimension to the old kitchen-sink realism. Here, the grey everyday domestic surroundings meet classical proportions. With inexhorable sharpness, and with no beautifying or extenuating circumstances, Rich portrays a thoroughly felt life, far from Spike Lee's cool artistry or Cosby's tame family happiness. The women in the film try to comfort and balance the hatred against the world. They are clear-sighted, and think rationally. It's the men who are the great losers - with fantastic macho-dreams abont women, money and guns, they're no more than fantasizing children. But dreams are needed in this tragic world. When the film is coming to a close the claustrophobia is overbearing. No catharsis. Instead we're getting a quiet appeal in the epilogue: ''First things learned are hardest to forget. Traditions pass from one generation to the next. We need to change.'' An urgent request after the crisis, when nothing else can be done. Rich's unprotected documentary cinematography gives the impression of a docu-drama, a rarely shown USA as open wound. ''What the hell do we know about being black?'' _
LOTTA NEUHAUSER

Medverkande
George T. Odom, Ann D. Sanders: Producent
Matty Rich: Manus
Matty Rich: Foto
John Rosnell: Musik
Harold Wheeler: Talat språk
English