Personal Problems

The late writer-director Bill Gunn and a team of polymath artists (including novelist Ishmael Reed) made this often fascinating 1980 drama. Shot on available video equipment of the era, Personal Problems is an oddity, not looking like a conventional movie but also being too slow and uncomfortably intimate to be TV fare. Comprised of episodic scenes involving African American characters in New York, the film centers on the failing marriage of a nurse, Johnnie Mae Brown (Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, a real-life writer) and her husband Charles (Walter Cotton), whose indifference has driven Johnnie Mae into the arms of Raymon (Sam Waymon), a soulful singer whose imploring lyrics bring out her deeply moving inner life. Personal Problems is less interested in capturing beauty than it is in presenting a mesmerizing series of truths within the rough confines of vintage video. Gunn doesn’t try to work around technical limitations so much as capture realistic moments, such as an absurd but unnerving scene of an argument between a black conservative and a white liberal, or a few minutes at an outdoor cafe where Johnnie Mae and her girlfriends trade gossip and laughs. Personal Problems at times looks like a fly-on-the-wall documentary, one that takes a deep dive into its characters’ souls. Presented in a restored edition, extras include a “making-of” featurette, extended and deleted scenes, an original radio drama version, a cast and crew Q&A at the restoration premiere, and a booklet. Recommended. (T. Keogh)