`Lesson Before Dying' Is Lesson In Good Tv

There is a delicate balance in Ernest J. Gaines' "A Lesson Before Dying," a way the language and plot progression straddle triumph and sorrow, with a tinge of bitterness thrown in for good measure.

But in the careful hands of director Joseph Sargent (with ample help from Don Cheadle, one of Hollywood's most underrated black actors), Gaines' novel, set in 1940's Jim Crow Louisiana, blooms on the small screen.

Debuting at 9:30 p.m. tomorrow on HBO, "A Lesson Before Dying" is one of those films that should be discussed in the office cafeteria next week. Sargent seems to excel in making emotionally charged pictures with wide-reaching appeal; after all, he's the man behind the Emmy-award-winning "Miss Evers' Boys."

"Lesson" doesn't have the newsworthy controversy tagged upon "Miss Evers' Boys," a movie based on a play that brought the long-buried horrors of the Tuskegee study to the fore of discussion. It should, however, attract a large audience for a different reason: Gaines' book received a coveted kiss of life from literature's fairy godmother, Oprah Winfrey, making it a best seller. And if those millions of readers are watching Oprah, chances are a number of them will have premium cable.

Cheadle plays Grant Wiggins, a college-educated black man in the 1940s who was anxious to leave segregated Louisiana, but nonetheless returned to teach children in a one-room classroom. The only thing he has to offer them, he feels, is flight; there isn't much of an opportunity for black folks in the Jim Crow South.

An example of this is in what happened to a boy named Jefferson: On his way to go fishing in the movie's opening frames, Jefferson hitches a fateful ride with a pair of men, whose brief stop at a general store ends in a botched robbery. It leaves the white shopkeeper and the two men dead, and the shocked onlooker Jefferson taking the blame.

At his trial, his defense attorney all but sends him to the electric chair, trying to convince the jury that Jefferson is nothing better than a hog who had no sense of what he was doing. The all-white jury decides this "hog" should fry.

The women who helped raise Jefferson, Miss Emma (Irma P. Hall) and Tante Lou (Cicely Tyson), the community's matriarchs, make Wiggins teach Jefferson the lesson of dignity before his death date. It's a hard sell. Wiggins doesn't want to be reminded of the indignities his fellow African Americans have to face, and Jefferson has been so dehumanized he refuses most human contact. Slowly, the men break through to one another, and the construction of their relationship is where Sargent gets a chance to shine.

The director milks the value out of each scene and setting, from the claustrophobic, peeling dark walls of Jefferson's cell to the shining green fields of sugar cane, at once lovely but terrible in their own right; as Sargent shows us through Wiggins' interactions with field workers and the white landowners in the "Big House," they're a prison of a different sort.

Cheadle once again makes his part shine, conveying Wiggins' bubbling anger and sadness with subtlety, contemplation and a great heaviness. Between him, Tyson and Hall, "A Lesson Before Dying" becomes a drama filled with more dignity than pathos, and is ultimately triumphant. Gaines' novel is done a great justice by everyone involved.

Though HBO deserves a pat on the back for bringing this movie to television audiences, it's really too bad "A Lesson Before Dying" isn't playing in theaters. Those venues seem to be reserved for more shallow looks at wrongfully accused black men rotting in prison. The popcorn crowd would rather laugh at the follies of "Life," so much that it was the box office's top comedy for a few weeks running. What lesson does that teach us?