#06: AMERICAN FICTION

 

STARRING: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam brody, Issa Rae and Sterling K. Brown. Written and directed by Cord Jefferson. Music by Laura Karpman. Based on the book, Erasure by Percival Everett.  Running time 117 minutes.

Jeffrey Wright is Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, a black writer of dry, academically well received novels of merit, and an English professor in a Los Angeles University. When Monk is forced to take an extended sabbatical after one of his students is triggered by his writing of the 'N' word on the blackboard he finds his troubles only growing when first his latest novel is rejected and his agent urges him to write something more 'black'. Then his sister dies and his mother gets diagnosed with dementia.

A visit to a literary festival as a guest inspires him to write an stereotypical 'Black-experience' novel, about drugs, gangs, violence and gangstas in contempt of what he sees as a glut of so called black-lives fiction written mostly for a white audience. The book written more as a joke then a real effort shocks Monk when it's optioned  for $300,000 and then even more so when the film rights get sold too. To compound the deceit, Monk creates a fake identity for the author of an escaped convict called Stagg R. Leigh and then finds himself as part of a voting community for a prestigious literary award where his book is shortlisted. 

Jeffrey Wright, whose film this is, delivers a superb and beautifully nuanced performance as the conflicted author struggling with a complicated social life and richly deserves his Oscar nomination. The film is classified as a comedy drama, although the comedy comes from clever, mostly word play jokes rather than the usual comedies Hollywood throw at us. 

Sadly it's a film with too many stories and too much baggage and the central story that of the writing of Monk's faux black experience novel, which is genuinely funny, gets sadly sidelined by the family drama and the climax somewhat fudges the ending. Still, it's a satisfying and adult drama about relationships and real life and has something to say about today's Generation Alpha's fragile psyches.

8/10