{"id":10771,"date":"2024-01-15T08:24:49","date_gmt":"2024-01-15T13:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10771"},"modified":"2024-02-14T08:31:24","modified_gmt":"2024-02-14T13:31:24","slug":"on-the-big-screen-american-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10771","title":{"rendered":"On the Big Screen: American Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The entertaining film American Fiction <\/em>is about Black author Thelonious \u201cMonk\u201d Ellison whose highbrow works don\u2019t sell (trailer<\/a>). As a piece of literary sarcasm, he deploys a pseudonym (Stagg R. Lee) and the persona of a fugitive from justice to pen a novel full of gangsta stuff\u2014shootings, drugs, unknown daddies, you name it. Frustratingly, this pile of clich\u00e9s, which he regards as trash, is snatched up by a publisher. A big-budget movie deal is in the works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems Americans (book publishers, movie-makers, consumers) are much more willing to accept that depiction of Black life than the reality of an upbringing like Monk\u2019s: a father and two siblings who are doctors, his life as a college instructor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Racist attitudes about Blacks aren\u2019t the only prejudice explored in the film. The Black family\u2019s prejudice against white people recurs. And, Monk\u2019s brother is a gay plastic surgeon who escaped from Massachusetts to Tucson to put a continent between himself and the homophobic attitudes of his parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This may sound a bit heavy, but the script (written by Cord Jefferson) has a light touch and frequent bursts of humor, even when we see our not-best selves. No matter how on-point the humor is, it\u2019s never mean-spirited. Jefferson also directed the film, which stars Jeffrey Wright giving a vulnerable, complex performance as Ellison\/Lee, Tracee Ellis Ross as his sister, Sterling K. Brown as brother Clifford, and Leslie Uggams as their widowed mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Ortiz does a perfect job as Ellison\u2019s agent, the only person in on the joke. He\u2019s against the idea at the outset, but when it\u2019s such a runaway financial success, he\u2019s in. Monk is not. He wants to abandon the Stagg R. Lee project, but for various reasons, he\u2019s increasingly stuck. Adam Brody plays the terminally clueless Hollywood producer. He thinks he\u2019s cool with Black people, but . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monk embarks on a predictable romance with public defender Coraline (Erika Alexander). It\u2019s useful to the story, because it hits the nail home for Monk about the downsides of his disengagement with life\u2014ironically, what his fiction suffers from too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The many closeups of Monk\u2014taking situations in and puzzling over them\u2014give the impression he\u2019s merely an observer of his life , not a participant. In one of many beautiful filmmaking moments, early on, a death occurs that Monk watches through a not-quite-closed hospital door. From down the hall, you see him silhouetted in front of the door, and when he realizes what\u2019s happened, he slowly backs away, distancing himself from another painful reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics\u2019 rating: 93%; audiences: 98%.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The entertaining film American Fiction is about Black author Thelonious \u201cMonk\u201d Ellison whose highbrow works don\u2019t sell (trailer). As a piece of literary sarcasm, he deploys a pseudonym (Stagg R. Lee) and the persona of a fugitive from justice to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Funny and pointed. American Fiction is a commentary on the tunnel vision created by prejudice. ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[269,62,272,1288,57,104],"tags":[2142,2143],"class_list":["post-10771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actor","category-authors","category-comedy","category-culture","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-american-fiction","tag-jeffrey-wright"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2NJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10771"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10773,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10771\/revisions\/10773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}