American Fiction
The peerless Jeffrey Wright plays a literary professor who rejects the new voice of African-American fiction.
The write stuff: Jeffrey Wright
Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction is fecund with irony, not all of its own making. As the musical of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple hoovers up citations in the lead-up to Oscar night, so American Fiction is garnering recognition from a different African-American quarter. Its complex, noble protagonist Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison might not see eye-to-eye with Alice Walker, but then he might not approve of the film of his own life, either. Literature can be ambiguous like that. ‘Monk’ is a black writer and English professor and is a wonderful creation. The good fortune is that he is played by Jeffrey Wright, one of the great unsung heroes of American cinema, who brings a depth and heft to Monk that neither obscures the absurdity of the character nor bypasses his reality. This is a gift of a part and Wright makes it his own.
Thelonious Ellison is an outcast in that he comes from a family of Boston doctors and has opted for a literary life in Los Angeles. He might think a little too much of himself, or just think too much, while neglecting the needs of his own extended family. He is perhaps more concerned with the state of the black experience between the covers of scholarly tomes, admitting that he “doesn’t really believe in race.” For him, his ancestors have been ring-fenced in cliché and he just wants to challenge his readers, to explore fresh ideas. His funny, self-assured sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) believes that “books change people’s lives”, although Monk’s agent (John Ortiz) warns him to “never underestimate how stupid people are.” Every perspective here is aired for comic effect but Monk is too conservative, short-sighted and perhaps condescending, to see the funny side.
For him, great literature is everything and as his mother Agnes (Leslie Uggams) descends into dementia and the family funds seem to be drying up, he is unaware of what matters on a more material level. And just as he believes that things can’t get any worse – he is relieved of his post at university for using the N word in his primarily white class – things do get worse…
Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison is a deliciously multi-faceted character, an intellectual denying the claustrophobic straitjacket of his racial identity. In some respects he is a dreamer, but if so he is a smart one, and to make a point he bashes out a novel that he considers to be a model of everything he despises in the dumbing down of the African-American experience. Of course, one can see where all this is going, but by the time first-time writer-director Cord Jefferson starts steering his film into more satirical waters, he has grounded his characters into recognisable human beings. It is to Monk’s horror that his own brother, Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), has turned into a black stereotype, but more so that he hadn’t noticed the transition. Only near the end does the film’s shifts of tone rather over-egg the film-versus-novel trope, but Jefferson’s smart, springy dialogue – and the performances that bring it to life – make up for everything.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Erika Alexander, Leslie Uggams, Adam Brody, Keith David, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Raymond Anthony Thomas, Miriam Shor, Michael Cyril Creighton, J.C. MacKenzie, Patrick Fischler, Bates Wilder, Skyler Wright, Megan Robinson.
Dir Cord Jefferson, Pro Ben LeClair, Nikos Karamigios, Cord Jefferson and Jermaine Johnson, Screenplay Cord Jefferson, from the novel Erasure by Percival Everett, Ph Cristina Dunlap, Pro Des Jonathan Guggenheim, Ed Hilda Rasula, Music Laura Karpman, Costumes Rudy Mance.
Orion Pictures/MRC Film/T-Street Productions/Almost Infinite/3 Arts Entertainment-Artificial Eye.
116 mins. USA. 2023. US Rel: 22 December 2023. UK Rel: 2 February 2024. Cert. 15.
