Spoiler Alert!
Movies invite us into worlds that may resemble reality or fantasy. The newly released film American Fiction, is a dance in both realms. It is a social satire directed by Cord Jefferson and its source material is the book Erasure by Percival Everett.
I sat in the second to the last row in the County Theater in Doylestown, PA, since the theater was packed with viewers, who, like me, may have had many reasons to see this Oscar contender. The film was nominated for five of the gold statuettes, including Best Picture. Jeffrey Wright who takes the lead role as Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison (a college professor and author whose books are well written and critically acclaimed but ‘not Black enough’ for popular consumption) was tapped for and Sterling K. Brown who plays Monk’s younger brother Cliff (a recently divorced drug addicted plastic surgeon whose wife found him in bed with a man) is up for
Others who share the stage included the iconic Leslie Uggams playing their aging mother Agnes who has taken a precipitous tumble into Alzheimer’s, Tracy Ellis Ross is their doctor sister Lisa who exits early on in the film, setting the family up for grief and scrambling to meet the needs of their mother. In the course of the film, Monk encounters best selling novelist, Sintara (every time I saw her name, I had to adjust my perception, since my mind read it as Sinatra) Golden, portrayed by Issa Rae, and Coraline (Erika Alexander) is Monk’s attorney love interest who he meets when his family gathers in their beach town home to honor his sister’s passing.
My review when I left the theater, “What a f-ing wonderful film! (If you see it, you will understand that reference) It is about writing, culture, family, life and death, aging, and coming to terms with who you are. Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us) and Tracy Ellis Ross (Black-ish) were already on my favorite actor list. Although the character of Cliff was worlds apart from Randall Pearson, I caught a few that’s-so-Randall moments.”
From the get-go, it is apparent that Monk is a talented, but disgruntled writer, and a passionate, but abrasive professor who is asked to take a leave of absence from his job. While attending a writers’ conference, he watches Golden read, to a standing ovation, an excerpt from her best selling novel that panders to Black stereotypes. He stands in the back of the room in bewilderment. Their paths cross later in the film as they are asked to be on a panel of authors who are evaluating Black fiction for a prestigious award. Golden offers this gem to Monk, “Potential is what people see when they think what’s in front of them isn’t good enough.”
What started out as a lark and a tweak to the powers-that-be white publishers and audiences, Monk pens a novel that he originally calls My Pafology that has all the tropes his previous novels were missing. The book is immediately scarfed up by a major publisher to the tune of a $750,000 advance and by a filmmaker for 4 million smackeroos. Monk is so embarrassed that he has stooped to this level since it offends his sensibilities that he uses the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh and creates a gangsta persona for himself. He keeps this identity under cover from his family and partner. As a way of attempting to stop the train, he changes the name of the book to a four letter expletive that begins with F and ends with K. The publisher, movie maker and audience rally around it even more. Another motivating factor is that the money pays for the memory care facility in which his mother needs to live.
The relationships between the characters reflect the dynamics that occur in many families, including secrets, multi-generational patterns, estrangement, inability to accept someone’s true identity. Monk sees himself as different from his siblings, as he is the only one who didn’t follow in their philanderer doctor father’s professional footsteps. He holds his emotions pretty close to the vest, until Stagg R. Leigh is given voice.
My favorite line from the film that is a message for everyone, comes from Cliff, “People want to love you, Monk. I personally don’t know what they see in you, but they want to love you. You should let them love all of you.”
—
This Post is republished on Medium.
—
Photo credit: Author