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    A Great James Earl Jones Role That Can Finally Be Seen

    A restored version of Charles Burnett’s 1999 movie “The Annihilation of Fish” opens at the Brooklyn Academy of Music after being virtually unshown for 25 years.When James Earl Jones died in September at 93, he left behind a great performance that, for 25 years, has gone virtually unseen. The movie, “The Annihilation of Fish,” directed by Charles Burnett, had its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1999 but never received a proper release. Now it’s getting a second chance, in a restoration that opens Friday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.“I hope people see it in a fresh light, and look at the talent,” Burnett, 80, said by phone from his home in Los Angeles.A great deal has changed since 1999: Burnett’s masterpiece “Killer of Sheep,” completed in 1977 and accorded a belated opening in 2007, is more widely available than it had been in those intervening years, and an honorary Oscar for Burnett in 2017 put a spotlight on a body of work that has long been championed by critics. The loose movement from which Burnett emerged — the group of film students at the University of California, Los Angeles, who became known as the L.A. Rebellion — has been the subject of academic attention in recent years. And while Jones’s death occurred after the restoration of “The Annihilation of Fish” was completed, the prospect of seeing the actor in one of his finest roles offers yet another reason to check out this surreal and disarming film.Jones plays Obediah Johnson, an immigrant from Jamaica who begins the movie having spent 10 years under institutional care. Obediah, who goes by the name Fish, is tormented by visions of being attacked by a demon — an invisible presence that he repeatedly tries to wrestle into submission, baffling those around him.Released from his supervised living situation, Fish makes his way from New York to Los Angeles; he figures that the City of Angels will give him an advantage over a demon. Upon arrival, he moves into a boardinghouse run by an eccentric landlady, Mrs. Muldroone (Margot Kidder). Soon they are joined by the woman who becomes the home’s only other resident, Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave), who is running from an invisible companion of her own: the ghost of Puccini, her lover, with whom she has called it quits. (They can’t marry because California law requires a corporeal presence.)Jones plays Obediah Johnson, who goes by the name Fish. He is tormented by visions of being attacked by a demon.Kino LorberWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘The Annihilation of Fish’ Review: A Gem That’s Worth the Wait

    The director Charles Burnett’s deeply humane, singular film from 1999, starring James Earl Jones, is finally receiving a theatrical release.Obediah Johnson — the lost-and-found soul played by a magnificent James Earl Jones in “The Annihilation of Fish” — has a barrel chest and a voice that sounds like it emerged, warmed and polished, from unfathomable depths. It’s an instrument that many know from “Star Wars” and “The Lion King,” in which Jones voiced two of the most totemic fathers in movies. Yet the eloquence of his basso profundo was also instrumental in lesser-known works like “Annihilation,” Charles Burnett’s deeply humane, singular view from the margins that is receiving a theatrical release 26 years after its first public screening at a film festival.It seems shocking that it’s taken this long for the film to hit theaters given Burnett’s elevated standing; his masterful “Killer of Sheep” (1978) is a milestone in American cinema and his reputation long established. There are a number of reasons that “The Annihilation of Fish,” his fifth feature, didn’t reach the world earlier. Among other things, genuine independent filmmaking, the kind that transcends formula and expectations and comes without corporate sponsorship, has always been difficult to market. And Burnett, whose filmography includes “To Sleep With Anger” (1990), a neo-Gothic tale about a Southern interloper that slips between drama and comedy, has always defied compartmentalization. He can’t be pigeonholed.“The Annihilation of Fish” similarly evades classification, genre and otherwise. The movie is often gently funny, though occasionally lurches into boisterous excess, with jolts of slapstick and glints of ticklish nonsense. At the same time, there’s a strong current of melancholy running throughout the story, which complicates and occasionally destabilizes its comedy. There are moments here when you laugh but aren’t sure if you should, and instances when you wonder (and worry) if you’re laughing with the characters or at them, and whether it matters. Most movies prompt you about when it’s time to laugh and to cry; not this one.Written by Anthony C. Winkler, the film tells the tale of Obediah — he goes by Fish — a Jamaican immigrant who’s long lived in a mental facility in New York and claims to be bedeviled by an invisible demon he calls Hank. The demon pops up unexpectedly, as imps tend to do, and Fish keeps him in check by wrestling him. They’re grappling in church soon after the movie opens, a tussle that ends with Fish being abruptly ousted from his group home. “It was like Pearl Harbor,” he protests to a functionary, “sneak attack!” No matter. Soon, he is out the door with his suitcase and headed West, where his story begins in earnest.Fish ends up in that vexed paradise known as Los Angeles, where he moves into a modest, dilapidated apartment building run by a friendly eccentric, Mrs. Muldroone (a winning Margot Kidder). With its lush garden and stained, peeling interior, the building is the sort of place you can imagine the likes of Nathanael West and David Lynch making poetically dark use of. By contrast, Fish settles in with the pragmaticism of someone who must make do with what little life has afforded him: He spruces up his new apartment, transforming squalor into a home. Not long after, he meets Poinsettia (Lynn Redgrave).The trickiest character in the movie, Poinsettia is introduced sometime before she and Fish meet; you know she’s important to his story from how Burnett cuts between them, like an anxious matchmaker. A loud, aggressively flamboyant figure given to voluble yowling and mewling, Poinsettia lives in San Francisco and claims to be in a relationship with the invisible and very dead Giacomo Puccini, a fixation that involves some strained comedy. Things improve when she too leaves for Los Angeles (before she does, Burnett tucks in an allusion to “Vertigo,” a classic of mad love), where she moves into the apartment across from Fish’s.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More