A Lesson Before Dying

Director: Joseph Sargent Joseph Sargent

Overview

"Joseph Sargent's solid adaptation of A Lesson Before Dying comes to DVD with a standard full-frame transfer. English and Spanish soundtracks are rendered in Dolby Digital Stereo. English, Spanish, and French subtitles are accessible. Supplemental materials include cast and crew biographies. This well-acted drama manages to be both an effective piece of drama and a powerful social statement about racism in America."

Product Details

Release Date:	01/25/2000
UPC:	0026359157028
Original Release:	1999
Rating:	PG-13
Source:	Hbo Home Video
Region Code:	1
Sound:	[monaural]
Language:	English
Time:	1:41:00

Special Features

Interactive menus; Cast and crew bios; Multiple languages and subtitles tracks; Scene selections

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Don Cheadle	Grant Wiggins
Cicely Tyson	Tante Lou
Mekhi Phifer	Jefferson
Irma P. Hall	Miss Emma
Brent Jennings	Rev. Ambrose
Lisa Arrindell Anderson	Vivian Baptiste
Frank Hoyt Taylor	Sheriff Guidry
Stuart Culpepper	Henri Pichot
Patty Mack	Inez
Elijah Kelley	Clarence
Wynton Yates	Louis Washington
Clay Chappel	Paul
Von Coulter	Farrell Jareau
Jameelah Nuriddin	Irene Cole
Cierra Meche	Estelle
Walter Breaux Jr.	Joe Claiborne
Dana Ivey	Edna Guidry
Michael Sahr Ngaujah	Brother
Lisa Anderson	Vivian Baptiste
Clay Chappell	Paul
Ernest Troost	Composer

Technical Credits

Ann Peacock

Ann Peacock	Screenwriter
Joseph Sargent	Director
Ted Demme	Executive Producer
Joel Stillerman	Executive Producer
Ellen Krass	Executive Producer
Robert Benedetti	Producer
Chuck Jeffreys	Stunts
Robi Reed-Humes	Casting

Editorial Reviews

It's too much of a lesson to make for great entertainment, but A Lesson Before Dying wasn't made to sell popcorn. In fact, it wasn't even made for the theater. By 1999, cable was the only home for steadfastly earnest movies about soul-searching blacks in the South. Joseph Sargent's film tells an important enough story that it rewards HBO's investment. A Lesson Before Dying wasn't the first nor last such film for Sargent, a prolific TV director, but it did prove a departure for star Don Cheadle, whose previous characters tended to be more unsavory than well-meaning teacher Grant Wiggins. But like his hotel manager in Hotel Rwanda, which would earn Cheadle an Oscar nomination five years later, Wiggins starts out confused, even resentful about his unwitting mission. The film charts both his own growth, and that of the condemned man (Mekhi Phifer), whose self-respect was snatched when his attorney pleaded that executing him would be like executing a hog. The dehumanization of black youths, particularly their abandonment at the hands of the educational system, is rich enough material for a film on its own. But Ann Peacock's adaptation of Ernest J. Gaines' novel is layered enough that it also tackles the divide between light-skinned and dark-skinned blacks, and between the religious and the secular. Grant's unwillingness to be the mouthpiece for the church, when those around him swear it's the only way for the prisoner to find salvation, is the crux of much of the drama. All the performances are effective, but Irma P. Hall is the most moving as the prisoner's life-long caretaker, whom he painfully shuns after his imprisonment.