PG | 2 h 8 min | Drama | 1961
Lorraine Hansberry begins her award-winning play with one word that describes the living room of a poor, mid-20th century black household: weariness. Weariness has won, Hansberry writes of her characters’ living room, because everything in it has been sat on, used, and scrubbed too often. All pretenses have long since vanished from it. A table here or maybe a chair there has been shifted over the years to hide a worn carpet. Unsurprisingly, weariness and hiding permeate the movie that Hansberry’s play inspired.
A windfall, in the form of a life insurance check, compels the needy Younger family to sift want from need. And, as if that were not enough, its tantalizing promise of a better life within their grasp, yet somehow out of reach, forces them to decide what their values are….