Alex Heeney reviews the 4K restoration of Charles Burnett’s delightful 1999 screwball comedy The Annihilation of Fish, which had been buried after its premiere.
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The new 4K restoration of Charles Burnett’s delightful 1999 late-in-life screwball comedy The Annihilation of Fish offers this worthy film a new lease on life, much like its characters. When Jamaican-American Fish (James Earl Jones) and opera-fanatic Pointsettia (Lynn Redgrave) move in across the hall in the same LA apartment complex, the pair discover they have more in common than their absurd names and overwhelming loneliness. They also have imaginary friends — Fish is forever seeing and getting into altercations with ‘‘the devil,’ while Pointsettia has only just laid to rest her years-long love affair with the long-dead Puccini.
The film’s zany premise gives way to a touching, gentle story of two lonely people who find life is worth living when they have someone with whom they can build matchstick houses or play gin rummy — even if it’s an uncommonly lucky white lady who wins every round. Annihilation of Fish is about people who have lived long enough to know to accept other people’s foibles, even if it means validating an absurd story they’re telling. Poinsettia’s immediate acceptance of Fish’s imaginary devil is what seals their friendship-turned-romance. But her unwillingness to play along forever leads to a short-lived tragedy that only another flight of fancy can remedy.
Best in its intimate moments
The Annihilation of Fish is at its best in its intimate moments. It’s a film that painstakingly tracks a single elderly man as he deep-cleans his new apartment and furnishes it piece by piece. He does all of this alone because he is alone — except for his demon. It’s a film about a man preparing a meal as a gesture of love and breaking the tension at another dinner by pretending to choke. It’s a film where two grown adults can lie casually in bed together, bodies intertwined after sex, and talk about their thoughts, plans, and whether another round might spell a heart attack.
Burnett’s attention to the details of daily living grounds Fish and Pointsettia in real situations and emotions. Anthony C. Walker’s script wisely introduces us to their widowed landlady, who is further proof that loneliness at a certain stage of life can drive you a little batty, even if you aren’t named after an animal or a plant. Wisdom and life experience are earned with heartbreak and trauma, and so, too, are certain eccentricities.
An eye for colour and visual details in The Annihilation of Fish
Burnett’s eye for colour and visual details supports our understanding of the characters. Burnett brings Fish’s empty, dank apartment to life when Fish buys a plant, a fan, and a coloured quilt. Late in the film, there’s a marvelous scene of the pair walking together on a rainy day after their emotional break, where their costumes reflect their emotional division. A glum Fish is dressed all in black with a black umbrella, while clueless Pointsettia, dreaming of their shared future, wears a patterned dress with a red umbrella, which matches the bridge in the background, further visually separating her from Fish. And the film ends with three of the sweetest and funniest grave sites you’ll ever see on film.
As is often the story of films by and about marginalized groups, it only takes one scathing review by an ignorant cis-white man to bury a good film for years, even decades. Naomi Kawase’s 2014 masterpiece Still the Water faced a similar fate after its Cannes bow in 2014 to unjustified poor reviews, although Film Movement rescued it in the 2020s. Todd McCarthy’s wrongheaded Variety review (a publication that still hangs onto its bigoted dinosaurs past their expiration date) of The Annihilation of Fish in 1999 ensured it never came out in cinemas nor was available on home video — at least until now. Kino Lorber is screening the film across the United States and Canada, with a home video release to follow. Next month, Kino Lorber will release a 4K restoration of Burnett’s first feature, Killer of Sheep.
Related reading/listening to Charles Burnett’s The Annihilation of Fish
Read about other recommended recent restorations by and about women, LGBTQ+ people, BIPOC, and other diverse groups.
