“American Fiction” (now streaming on Amazon Prime Video)’s English professor Theophilus Ellison, portrayed by Jeffrey Wright (Basquiat), is grieving and aggrieved. The star-studded affair, now with five Oscar nominations, is the feature film debut of journalist and TV writer Cord Jefferson (“Watchmen,” “Survivor’s Remorse”). Tracee Ellis-Ross (Black-ish), Erika Alexander (“Living Single”), Issa Rae (Insecure), Sterling Brown (“This Is Us”), and legendary Leslie Uggams headline this tragicomedy that takes lazy literary depictions of “Black life” to task.
The action begins in a California college classroom. Ellison, played as nakedly weary by Wright, is an unapologetic contrarian indifferent to student and faculty pearl clutching. Things take a turn quickly and Ellison, known to his friends and family as “Monk”, is asked to take a leave of absence for his latest controversial racial remarks.
Luckily, he is scheduled to be a panelist at a literary conference in his hometown of Boston. Monk reunites with his mother (Uggams) and sister, played by Ellis Ross, an about-to-be divorced doctor with a penchant for telling bad jokes.
As he juggles the absurdities and indignities of reuniting with family, he’s also dealing with disappointment. Another of his novels is being rejected. It’s “not Black enough.” Ellison reaches the end of his rope, and in an act of passive-aggressive desperation, pseudonymously writes the kind of novel about Black people he believes publishers think they want. He’s certain they’ll be shamed into course-correcting.
He is, however, sadly, and hilariously wrong. They want to publish “Pafology,” like, yesterday!
As the family holes up in their tiny yet charming and cozy beach home after a sudden tragedy, Ellison is forced to assuage his ego, cope with his problematic family, and deal with the types of grief that being middle-aged ushers in.
His brother Cliff (Brown), a plastic surgeon, is the oil to Ellison’s water. Fresh off his own divorce to his white “beard” and finally eagerly embracing his gay identity, Cliff’s personality is everything his vocation suggests. Though Brown is most effective in his straight-man roles, he does an excellent job delivering urbane levity here.
Their beach house neighbor Coraline (Alexander), a lawyer in the midst of disentangling herself from her marriage, takes an instant liking to Ellison. Though soft-spoken, she is bold and assertive. She is also a fan of his books, and this draws Ellison to her until she later forces him to confront his views on Black representation.
Rae, as fellow novelist Sintara Golden, is an unwitting thorn in Ellison’s side. Her book’s grammatically challenged, stereotypical Black main characters have rendered her the darling of the publishing industry, while all his striving to deliver a more fulsome depiction of Black lives has rendered him much lower on the totem pole. Wright deftly conjures Ellison’s bitter bemusement at what he believes is the world’s eager acceptance of her cheap portrayal of Black life.
Veteran stage actors Myra Lucretia Taylor and Raymond Anthony Thomas, as a family helper and small-town security officer, respectively, bring warmth and heart that balances the cynicism of the other characters.
Despite its many strengths, including acting performances, spot-on cinematic choices, and exterior and interior settings that grounded the characters in authenticity, “American Fiction” loses critical focus of its main character.
As Monk researches his ersatz hood novel, he views films such as “Straight Outta Compton” and “Boyz N Da Hood” but there are no similar cues concerning books, which is initially what the audience is led to believe is the issue. The scene muddies the waters and weakens the character and story.
The audience also gets mixed messages about the specific nature of Monk’s umbrage. Certain scenes lead you to believe it’s white people’s perception of Blacks as criminals, in others it appears to be the white public’s obsession with Black struggle in general, in others it appears that it’s white people’s inability to acknowledge the reality of a Black middle class and/or upper-class experience such as the one lived by Monk and his family. And yes, the phrase “white people” was overused.
“American Fiction” failed to interrogate the fact that Black audiences (for books as well as the screen) flock to many of the same depictions as whites do, and often reject non-traditional depictions as not being authentically Black as well. Novels like “The Wedding” or “Emperor of Ocean Drive” for example, don’t have the hold on the public consciousness as those that draw on the grittier more despairing aspects of the Black experience.
Further, white characters in “American Fiction” are drawn in the same two-dimensional manner as too many other stories told by Black auteurs. Here, white publishers and movie execs are highlighted as clueless almost to the point of being infantile, or just downright dumb.
If films like “American Fiction” are to bring us closer to truths, and not keep us stuck in fiction, it’s perhaps time to go a bit deeper than clueless or the other default—just plain evil. Develop white characters who, even if they are racists, have a more sophisticated awareness of the world and their own motivations.
For such a smart, funny, well-crafted, and artfully conveyed commentary on race, “American Fiction” was surely able to deliver more but chose not to.
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