‘Down in the Delta’ Celebrates Redemption, Family’s Rebirth

Unflinchingly, “Down in the Delta” goes straight to the heart with its powerful story of a young Chicago woman who finds redemption by returning to her ancestral roots in rural Mississippi.

In adding feature-film directing to her formidable list of accomplishments, poet and author Maya Angelou tells first-time screenwriter Myron Goble’s absorbing and far-ranging story with simplicity and directness while guiding a splendid ensemble cast to an array of impressive portrayals.

Alfre Woodard’s Loretta is a woman without a trace of self-confidence or self-respect. Her life has been on a downward spiral since her husband deserted her when their daughter Tracy (Kulani Hassen) was diagnosed as autistic. She’s been hitting the bottle pretty hard, and there’s a strong suggestion that she has been involved in prostitution.

Meanwhile, her widowed mother, Rosa Lynn Sinclair (Mary Alice), a God-fearing retired nurse, has come to the decision that she must take drastic action to save her daughter and grandchildren. She pawns a cherished family heirloom--a magnificent solid silver candelabra that we discover has extraordinary symbolic significance in the family--and sends Loretta, Loretta’s bright, responsible adolescent son, Thomas (Mpho Koaho), and Tracy “down to the Delta” to stay the summer with her brother-in-law Earl Sinclair (Al Freeman Jr.).

Loretta and her kids are transported (by bus) to a world in jolting, sometimes amusing, contrast to Chicago’s dangerous South Side housing projects. Earl has as much strength, resolve and religious faith as his sister-in-law but has enjoyed far greater worldly success. A Korean War veteran, he is the owner of a sizable and attractive roadside restaurant and has acquired and restored the fine old frame farmhouse that once belonged to “the white Sinclairs”--the family that had owned Earl’s ancestors as slaves.

Earl is a man of principle and discipline tempered by kindness and wisdom. Loretta is expected to go to work (for which she will be paid) at the restaurant, and Thomas is charged with keeping his sister as quiet as possible, so as not to upset Earl’s wife, Annie (Esther Rolle), who has suffered from Alzheimer’s disease for about five years. Running the house is the warm and capable Zenia (Loretta Devine).

Inarticulate, barely literate, wasted-looking Loretta registers this radically different way of life with expressions of amazement, disdain and increasing gratitude. The unstinting tenderness and devotion Earl shows the gentle but confused Annie causes Loretta to see men in a new way. When Annie visits Zenia, she is bowled over by the fact that, although also a single mother with children, she has been able to own her own home.

Despite its verdant setting, “Down in the Delta” is not paradise on Earth. The Sinclairs experience the inevitable tensions of every family. Earl’s son Will (Wesley Snipes), a successful corporate attorney in Atlanta, hates to visit because his mother no longer recognizes him and because such family gatherings tend to exacerbate his already strained relations with his glamorous wife (Anne Marie Johnson). A traditionalist to the core, Earl has long resented that his late brother and Rosa Lynn went off to Chicago in the first place. (He’d like his son nearby, too.) Yet “Down in the Delta” trusts in the power of love to transcend such differences.

“Down in the Delta” evokes the cruel and outrageous heritage of slavery that is part of most every African American family and finds that a triumph over a tragic past can become a source of a fierce, sustaining pride. It also reveals how a sense of extended family--something that evaporated in countless families of every race a couple of generations ago--could be spread to embrace an entire community faced with crisis.

In short, “Down in the Delta” is a most heartening experience, and its cast is capable of moving you greatly. Woodard holds back resolutely in order to bring Loretta to new life in the smallest of increments. Al Freeman Jr. and Mary Alice give us a patriarch and a matriarch of dimension, not just of an abstract strength of character. Straight down the line every actor strikes just the right note, and Rolle, to whose memory the film is dedicated, remains a remarkable actress to the end, expressing Annie’s fleeting moments of clarity amid increasing perplexity with the dignity and presence that characterized her long and distinguished career.

Of course, “Down in the Delta” is meant to be uplifting, and unapologetically so, harking back to a tradition established by black pioneer filmmaker Oscar Micheaux 80 years ago. Yet the film, appropriately traditional in style itself, comes full circle in a rich, substantial way that is all the more gratifying. It’s not afraid to leave us with some loose ends, knowing that it has opened up so many possibilities for so many people.

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for drug-related material. Times guidelines: The film is suitable for the entire family because it takes pains to depict urban realities without exploiting them.

‘Down in the Delta’

Alfre Woodard: Loretta

Al Freeman Jr.: Earl Sinclair

Mary Alice: Rosa Lynn Sinclair

Esther Rolle: Annie Sinclair

A Miramax/Showtime presentation of an Amen Ra Films and Chris/Rose production. Director Maya Angelou. Producers Rick Rosenberg, Bob Christiansen, Victor McGauley, Wesley Snipes, Reuben Cannon. Co-producers Terri Farnsworth, Myron Goble, Alfre Woodard. Screenplay by Goble. Cinematographer William Wages. Editor Nancy Richardson. Music Stanley Clarke. Costumes consultant Ruth Carter. Costumes Maxyne Baker. Production designer Lindsey Hermer-Bell. Art director Robert Sher. Set decorator Megan Less. Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes.

In general release.