Movie Nation

One of the first accomplishments of the then newly-created National Film Registry was to rescue the work of Black indie filmmaker Charles Burnett.

The Registry was Created by the Library of Congress in 1988 and set up to “preserve” as “”culturally, historically or aesthetically significant films.” Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” was among the first 25 movies deemed endangered and worthy of recognition and preservation. That film stood out in that initital list because it was only ten years old, a little-seen indie film before “indie” was a thing, and was destined to vanish if no attention was called to it and its merits weren’t acknowledged.

Burnett’s still making films and remains almost as obscure as ever. But his small output over the decades has its gems, “To Sleep With Anger” among them.

“The Annihilation of Fish” is the only comedy he’s tried, a serio-comic character study in eccentricity. This slight but sweet 1999 film, a late career highlight of James Earl Jones, Lynn Redgrave and Margot Kidder, all of whom have since died, is the UCLA-trained Burnett’s How to Make an Indie Film primer to the generations of filmmakers that follow him.

Get a script with wildly colorful older characters, roles with range and good dialogue that shows they have something to say. Pitch it to under-employed older actors with names still big enough that they will get the movie financed. That approach got “Annihilation” financed and filmed, although few got a chance to see it when it was finished.

Kino Lorber has restored this film festival darling of the last millenium and given it a limited re-release in cinemas before streaming it so that it might finally find an audience. “Slight” it may be, but it’s well worth a look.

Jones plays Fish, a Jamaican-American retiree who is a handful for any landlord. He’s a sad widower who lacks purpose, he feels. So he “wrassles” a demon almost on a daily basis, creating a ruckus as he shouts and tumbles about on the floor before temporarily vanquishing it by tossing it through a window.

Redgrave is Poinsettia, a San Francisco screwball whose great love is Giocamo Puccini. She swoons in his presence and drowns out performers of his operas as she sings along. She’s tried to marry him, but even in San Francisco, the “groom” must be “corporeal” and not an Italian composer who died in 1924.

These two delusional flakes are destined to connect at the boarding house of a Pasadena fellow traveler. Mrs. Muldroone (Kidder) is a widow obsessed with the spelling of her last name, and with a “weed” her late husband hated but which she cultivates in her immaculately kept garden.

Her “no peculiar habits” question to her prospective tenants isn’t serious. She has a few of her own.

Poinsettia drinks and often passes out in the hallway when she does. Fish gallantly takes her in, and after complaints at the effrontery of that, also noting the “weirdo’s” habit of wrestling with a literal demon, Poinsettia flowers in his presence.

“My loneliness has made me crazy,” she confesses to a card-playing companion who understands and sympathizes with her mania.

“Anybody can see the difference between ‘dead and gone’ and ‘dead and come back,'” he says of her passion for Puccini.

As for himself, Fish might never get over his “wrasslin.” But his daily mantra, delivered in a soft Jamaican patois, may change.

“At your age, why ain’t you dead?”

Lovely Pasadena makes a grand setting for this “Annihilation.” But there’s not much more to this than three lost souls finding comfort in one another, and three accomplished actors — two of them onetime Oscar nominees — sinking their teeth into juicy, colorful eccentrics.

Jones, who experienced a late career revival thanks to theatrical successes and films such as “Field of Dreams,” “A Family Thing” and other roles in the ’80s and ’90s, is in grand form.

Redgrave, decades removed from her “Georgy Girl” breakthrough, similarly had a last hurrah in her as this film and the Oscar nominated “Gods & Monsters” came out the same year.

And Kidder, summoned back from the obscurity that worsened her lifelong mental health issues, was at her best one more time in a film that went unseen when it was new.

Sentiment may be the rest reason to see “The Annihilation of Fish.” But three great performers committing to their parts will always be a pleasure, and the fact that each was beloved by generations makes this dramedy an easy sell for most film buffs.

Rating: R, some sexual content

Cast: James Earl Jones, Lynn Redgrave and Margot Kidder.

Credits: Directed by Charles Burnett, scripted by Anthony C. Winkler. A Kino Lorber re-release.

Running time: 1:48