Based upon the novel Erasure by Perceval
Written For The Screen and Directed by Cord Jefferson
**** (four stars)
RATED R
The painful feeling of aloneness in being Black in America.
Late in "American Fiction," the filmmaking debut of Writer/Director Cord Jefferson, there is a moment between two characters where one makes an admission so grounded, so filled with a deeply knowing resignation that not only informed the character, the film as a whole but reflected within myself sitting in the audience. It was a moment of sincere and severe recognition that spoke to a grave realty and a certain inevitability. In myself, I felt the echo of this character's closing statement, "...it makes me sad."
Cord Jefferson's "American Fiction" is unquestionably one of 2023's finest films. What exists as a pointed satire about the perceptions of race mass produced for public consumption--this time, the publishing industry--Jefferson surprised me by essentially creating a dual narrative where one comments upon the other while being firmly cojoined. I would not be surprised if some viewers may wonder during the film's running time, if Jefferson had lost its narrative threads, trading or favoring one element for another. On the contrary, one element would be unable to exist without the other as they simultaneously inform and enhance each narrative. There are many moments within "American Fiction" that struck me with grim hilarity but yes, it made me feel very sad, very often for Jefferson truly found a distinctive tone when confronting the perceived inherent virtuousness of White people which conflicts with the perceived inherent monstrosities of Black people and the constant existential ache it leaves behind.
"American Fiction" stars the brilliant Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, author and professor who finds himself at a pivotal crossroads. While his novels are critically acclaimed, they are low sellers and his latest manuscript has not been accepted by publishers under the criticism that his work has been deemed to be "not Black enough." Meanwhile, Monk's University places him upon a temporary leave due to his uncompromising teaching philosophy regrading the exploration of race issues in literature and encourages him to attend a literary conference and perhaps reunite with his estranged family back home in Boston...to which Monk grudgingly accepts.
While in Boston, Monk indeed attends the conference at which he is dismayed and disgusted during a greatly attended seminar starring bestselling author Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), whose latest chronicle of Black life is the smash hit We's Lives In Da Ghetto. To the literary critics and the audience, Golden's novel is a stirring, brutally honest exploration of African-American culture while Monk is horrified at the novel's cartoonish pandering and the continued perpetuation of cultural stereotypes.
Exasperated at the reality of his manuscript's rejection and consumed with personal and professional fury at the existence of material like Sintara Golden's latest work, Monk crafts his own "Blaxploitation" manuscript entitled My Pafology under the pseudonym of Stagg R. Leigh, an escaped fugitive. Not only is the book quickly snapped up by publishers, it subsequently becomes a critically acclaimed novel and national bestseller...all to Monk's incredulity, deepening shame and upended sense of morality.
In my recent, and negative, review of Writer/Director Emerald Fennell's "Saltburn" (2023), I derided the film for its utter lack of originality as it was essentially a copycat of Writer/Director Anthony Minghella's "The Talented Mr. Ripley" (1999), without any sense of a new or honest perspective to make the work stand on its own cinematic feet. Granted, I was a bit worried about "American Fiction" as the first trailers made me utter to myself, "I loved this film when Spike Lee did it over 20 years ago."
Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" (2000), his incendiary satire about an African-American, Harvard educated television executive played by Damon Wayans who, out of frustration with his inability to shepherd television programs with positive Black imagery on air, creates a modern day minstrel show starring Black actors in Blackface which becomes a national sensation. It is a Molotov cocktail of a film. One of Lee's brashest, boldest, most uncompromising and righteously enraged efforts. It is also in the top three of my favorite films from the decade of 2000-2009. So, certainly, as Cord Jefferson's "American Fiction" was upcoming, I was interested but I was also deeply skeptical.
I needed not have worried whatsoever as Cord Jefferson has created a film that works in tandem with Spike Lee's film while extending itself into its own cinematic space with a perspective all of its own. Jefferson's satire wisely does not approach the more visually hallucinogenic texture of Lee's "Bamboozled" but that does not suggest that the cinematic teeth of "American Fiction" are not bared. Jefferson helms a more muted, recognizable world where the satire exists in a matter of fact fashion, thus making the extremes that much more distinctive in their scathing humor and unquestionable sorrow.
I enjoyed how as Monk is crafting My Pafology, his crass, cultural stereotypes characters physically walk around the room with him, verbally guiding him into how they would speak, act and think in order to match with already existing and so-called "authentic" tropes of the Black trauma porn he despises. I laughed hard at a commercial splicing together key tragic moments in existing Black cinema advertising Black excellence upon an Oprah styled television network. And of course, the exceedingly uncomfortable cringe humor of non-White characters coaching Monk on his "Blackness" in order to court White publishers, and subsequently, White film producers, in his guise as Stagg R. Leigh. Every satirical arrow hits its target perfectly in its ridiculousness and cultural cruelty as this is indeed how we as Black people are seen within the context of a larger White environment, and more pointedly, in a supposedly liberal White environment.
Where Cord Jefferson's "American Fiction" really finds its wings is when the story extends itself into what is essentially the film's core: Monk's family. Through Monk, we meet his Mother Agnes (Leslie Uggams), declining in health due to Alzheimer's disease, his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), a physician, his long estranged brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), housekeeper Lorraine (Myra Lucretia Taylor) and the memory of his Father who committed suicide seven years earlier.
Monk is a naturally interior soul, yet one who, over time, has built higher, thicker emotional walls which threaten to consume him in his own anger, however correct his anger is. Monk is wise enough to know that in America, as a Black man, he isn't allowed or afforded the opportunity top express his deepest emotions, especially his anger outwardly. He clearly works through any sense of self analysis within his published novels, and to a extent within his teaching, but as his novels are not largely read and the scrutiny of the University system stifles him, Monk's sense of aloneness leads to isolation, self imposed and otherwise. The unjust nature of what is accepted within White society regarding the lives of Black people only compounds his aloneness/isolation further, thus increasing his anger.
Regarding Monk's personal life, Cord Jefferson smartly does not judge Monk's reticence and further, reluctance to reunite with his family or the missteps he makes with Coraline (Erika Alexander), a family neighbor with whom Monk strikes up a romance. "American Fiction" gracefully and unapologetically invites us into interior world of a Black man in ways typically unseen within television and feature films and how refreshing and even healing it was to see and to know that me and people like myself were being seen in return.
I have expressed this sentiment time and again upon this site that representation matters, and that within the representation, viewers can see that (in this case) Black people matter...that I matter. It is painful to note that even now in the 21st century, we as Black people still have to assert that we are fully dimensional human beings and not the stereotypes that continue to permeate American culture.
Cord Jefferson's "American Fiction" inspires the viewer to come for the satire and to stay for the empathetic story of a loving yet fractured and gradually disintegrating/evolving Black family with explorations of adult Black siblinghood, on going generational Black family trauma with issues of mental illness, repression, and addictions that arrive via the self medications that arises from enduring the aforementioned generational and racial trauma, an exploration of Black manhood, sexuality and the difficulties of attaining and delivering intimacy as the social/emotional growth and development of Black males is not valued in America.
A sequence where Monk, at long last, confronts Sintara Golden is a scorcher! One filled with smart, sharp dialogue that was so strong that this one scene could have easily spiraled off into its own film a la Director Louis Malle's "My Dinner With Andre" (1981)! Jefferey Wright and Issa Rae worked at the top of their respective games in this quietly blistering sequence as their characters passionately debated each other over issues of cultural and personal integrity, complicity into continued perpetuation of negative Black stereotypes for personal gain, the heights and fallacies of White gatekeeper run industries (publishing, television, Hollywood films) and most importantly, between the two of them, precisely who is being dishonest as they are both knowingly playing the game at the expense of Black people.
And then, a White person enters the room. Debate ended, never to be continued.
As stated, the dual narratives of "American Fiction" work together as each one is the backdrop and often catalyst for the other. Key decisions Monk engages himself with within the publishing world over the course of the film are clearly motivated by events in his personal life and therefore, the consequences exacerbate his personal relationships. And since Monk is so emotionally isolated, both personally and racially, he has nowhere to go...a quandary I feel a powerful connection with and I would argue most Black Americans, especially those who happen to exist in largely White spaces like myself as I happen to be the one and only Black male at the business at which I am employed, making me constantly hyperaware of behaviors and perceptions that are assumed, unasked for and ever present regardless of the content of my character and quality of my work.
And there is no one to confide in because how do I begin to explain my inner world when the perception is the reality and the reality is unknown?
What is fiction within Cord Jefferson's "American Fiction"? Jefferson asks of every viewer to regard Monk and all of the characters through a lens of what is honestly recognizable and therefore, realistic when it comes to how Black people are viewed. When saying that we exist in equality is taken as a threat to others not being allowed to exist. When the perceptions that live inside one's mind carry more realistic weight than the person standing directly in front of them, a person never allowed the chance to be seen, known, understood, and empathized with as a fellow human being.
Yes...it makes me sad. Because if it hasn't happened by now in 2024, will it ever? Cord Jefferson's "American Fiction" is a plea as well as a demand to finally confront the fiction so we can finally engage with the reality and hopefully, no one need feel to exist in undeserved aloneness.
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