Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 57 minutes
Writers: Cord Jefferson, Percival Everett
Director: Cord Jefferson
Quick Impressions:
American Fiction is a bit like a mashup of Adaptation, Sorry to Bother You, The Producers, and your typical indie film about a moderately dysfunctional family navigating its way through crisis.
On the way to the theater, my husband was a bit apprehensive as I summed up what I knew of the plot (from the trailer) and sighed, “I’m frustrated with myself that I never managed to become the sort of writer whose books were either too acclaimed or too popular.” Somehow, I’ve blossomed into neither!
“I’m sure watching this movie will allay your frustrations,” my husband facetiously opined.
“I’m sure it won’t,” I agreed, “but watching it might cheer me up anyway because this is one of the remaining theatrical releases we need to check off our awards season viewing list.”
The premise of this film is abundantly clear from the trailer. A prominent black writer (Jeffrey Wright) who excels at literary fiction but can never seem to get anywhere near the bestseller list begins to suspect that publishers want “black” books that pander to white audiences, books that sell “the black experience,” i.e. dialect-heavy stories that focus on poverty, slavery, and crime. He thinks he should be writing literature, not selling a played-up, largely fictional identity. To make this point, he writes what he imagines such a book would be like, titles it My Pafology, and insists his agent send it out to publishers as a joke, lampooning them for their bad taste and exploitative practices. Of course, publishers love it, offer a huge advance, and release it to immediate runaway success.
I can’t say it didn’t give me pause to watch the trailer for this film immediately before seeing The Color Purple. Alice Walker’s novel and its subsequent adaptations are certainly not the kind of exploitative, soulless garbage Monk intends My Pafology to be. But there is a lot of dialect and a lot of suffering. The juxtaposition of the American Fiction trailer and The Color Purple gave me uncomfortable, “Should I be enjoying this so much?” feelings throughout that film. (The Color Purple is a good movie, though. My daughter and I liked it (especially Danielle Brooks), and she had all kinds of salient thoughts about why the musical numbers and moments of fun worked). After seeing American Fiction, I realize that Walker’s story has far more in common with a novel that initially rankles Monk than with his own satirical work. The juxtaposition still altered my viewing experience of both movies, though.
I do envy Jeffrey Wright’s Monk. (His given name is actually Thelonious, so, not surprisingly, his family calls him Monk.) I would love to be told routinely, “Your writing is simply too good. It’s of such high quality, your books aren’t selling in great numbers.” I would also settle for, “Boy, for a hack writer, you sure can sell books.”
I have a complex about publishing at this point. Getting published was my driving force when I was younger. I thought, “My youth is a hook. I’ll publish a book young, and then I can be a professional writer.” Yeah. Well, I did publish at nineteen, with Archway Books, then a print imprint of Simon & Schuster. But…I was nineteen. I didn’t have a game plan beyond publishing. I didn’t have an agent. I didn’t think I needed one. I was published. When my kids were babies, I finally decided to self-publish my YA urban fantasy series. So, of course, all six books of that (now complete) will be self-published. (You can’t switch to print in the middle, can you?)
Now I have a great novel, a mystery for adults. I don’t know what to do with it. I’m scared to query. I have a non-fiction project that seems to have a clearer path to publication. But I feel unworthy to finish writing that one. It doesn’t help that my own mental health struggles keep upending my equilibrium and confidence.
Monk has confidence in spades. (If anything, he needs less confidence.) What he’s lacking is meaningful connection with others. He’s working to build it. He does love his family, and he meets a woman he really likes. But American Fiction offers us two major conflicts—Monk’s professional frustration with the publishing industry and his personal struggles with his own (loveably) dysfunctional family.
The Good:
This starts as a quiet little story, then builds to an increasingly outrageous farce as Monk’s little “joke” goes totally off the rails, wildly out of his control. It’s not just that publishers don’t understand that they’re being mocked. They take things so far that Monk begins to feel panicked with shame. He’s a man of such high literary standards that you’d think he would call off the whole thing. But he can’t because he’s also an average American—meaning that his ailing mother needs expensive medical care he can’t afford.
I was so worried that Jeffrey Wright’s sonorous voice would put my husband to sleep. (I’m kind of kidding, but not really. I don’t think he’s ever made it through that one section of The French Dispatch because Wright’s voice is so sonorous it literally puts him to sleep.) Fortunately, Wright is not as over-the-top sonorous here, although he still has such a lovely voice. (I particularly like the way he says, “Mother.”)
Wright would be deserving of an Oscar nomination. His frequent reflective comments throughout the film play almost like narration. His habit of monologuing makes him an engaging protagonist. He’s also particularly good at showing us how he has a unique, nuanced relationship with every member of his family. I particularly liked his chemistry with his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), and I wish we could have seen more of them together. (I wish we could have seen more of Lisa in general. Ross made her feel like someone I knew, and I loved her humor.)
My favorite performance belongs to Sterling K. Brown (also Oscar worthy) as Monk’s troubled brother Cliff, going through a rough patch in his life. He’s so charismatic, full of mischievous younger brother energy in most of his scenes, but at times, so wounded, sad, adrift. It’s a very subtle performance of an intense, flamboyant character.
Some of the film’s smaller supporting performances have a lot of power. I particularly liked the evolution of Monk’s relationship with Issa Rae’s character and appreciated that it didn’t evolve any further. Adam Brody is fun as Hollywood filmmaker Wiley Valdespino. John Ortiz gets some nice moments as Wright’s agent. They work well together on screen, making the most of the phone-calls-to-the-publisher scenes. And I wanted to spend a little more time with Lorraine the housekeeper (Myra Lucretia Taylor).
Erika Alexander makes such a compelling love interest that I wouldn’t have entirely minded if the movie had turned into a romantic comedy. Her relationship with Monk progresses in a reassuringly realistic way.
Best Scene:
I inadvertently chuckled out loud (like, “Huh!”) at one great moment where a member of the judging panel for a fiction prize completely ignores the two black members of the jury’s thoughts on a book by a black author by saying something like, “I just think we really need to listen to black voices right now.”
There’s a pair of scenes that work together so poignantly, both featuring moments of mental confusion involving Monk’s mother (Leslie Uggams). In one, she dances with Monk’s brother, then shatters the moment by saying something hurtful she cannot help. In the next, she says something affirming to Monk when she believes she’s talking to someone else. Taken together, those moments were my favorite part of the movie.
Best Scene Visually:
I loved the moment when Monk catches up with his mother on the beach at night and does what he can to assuage her distress.
“This is how you have to talk to me,” I lamented to my husband.
“No, it’s not,” he said.
I worry one day (maybe soon) I’ll be a delusional old woman wandering along the beach, seeking reassurance about the well-being of my missing children.
Best Action Sequence:
Monk’s exit from his lunch meeting with Wiley is pretty great, especially because that siren is awakening a real-life trauma. Wiley’s right. Monk is “real” when he runs out of the restaurant.
I also like Monk’s baffled panic when he hears that federal authorities may be involved. I thought, “Wow! This guy is so much like me. He’s got this parallel reality unfolding inside his head.” It’s a writer’s curse, I suppose.
The Negatives:
I got invested in these characters, so I’m not sure that I found the ending satisfying. It reminded me a bit of Adaptation, but the off-the-wall ending is what I liked best about that film, probably because I didn’t necessarily love those characters early in the film.
Normally in stories like this, the cerebral, metadramatic elements hold the most appeal for me, but I found the warmth of some of the characters truly compelling. So the late scenes that take us out of the story felt surprisingly grating to me. Normally, this is the kind of thing I love, but in this case, I wanted to believe in the reality of the fiction. I wanted to stay in the world of the characters I’d come to care about.
But I don’t exactly blame the movie for this. At one point, Monk notes that his own life is a mess. It’s just nothing like the crime-riddled joke he has written and shipped off to publishers. And I think the movie wants us to bristle at the sudden break with the reality of the characters. If others are like me, we like them. We’re more invested in the characters in the true story than we are in building a clever work of fiction. I suppose I actually like the notion the movie leaves us with, that fiction is manufactured, but reality simply unfolds around us. There’s a place for both.
I thought the housekeeper’s storyline was a bit too convenient, but then again—how convenient! It’s a satisfying way of figuring out what to do with the character.
I did wish we got to see more of My Pafology (later provocatively retitled). I know Monk thinks of it as a soulless joke, but is it? Throughout the entire film, we see him wrestle with the ghost of his father (who shot himself). In the one scene we witness from My Pafology, an angry young man rants at his (newly discovered) father, then shoots him. I mean, come on. A joke? Monk’s kidding himself, right? I wanted to see more, to see a more explicit connection drawn.
A couple of times, the movie preyed on my own insecurities. In one scene, Monk’s girlfriend brings a bouquet with her to dinner, and her mother exclaims that she loves dahlias. This triggered a chain-reaction of self-recrimination in me. I thought, “Not only am I not the literary elite, but I never remember to bring people flowers when I come for dinner, and I’m not sure I could identify dahlias on sight. But people of culture live in a different world.” Then suddenly I started thinking about Hilary Swank in The Black Dahlia, how she was also part of a world that has nothing to do with me. This was all quite brief, just long enough to reaffirm the notion that everybody is a part of some elite culture inaccessible to me. Honestly, as I watched American Fiction, I felt I had a lot in common with Monk and his tortured ruminations. That’s not a knock on the film. It’s a criticism of me as a viewer. (It’s also not even true. I’ve brought people flowers before. I love buying flowers. I’ve handed out more flowers than Eliza Doolittle!)
I do wish the ending let us believe the fantasy a bit more, but I liked American Fiction enough that I’ll probably read the book.
Overall:
American Fiction is easy to watch. It gives us something to think about but also lets us feel the authentic relationships of Monk and his family. I might have liked a slightly different ending better (but maybe I only imagine that). I did, however, love the characters and the performances, especially Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown. I like all meditations on writing fiction, and this film is no exception.