Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction will probably be one of the buzziest films in Hollywood this award season, if the audience at AFI is anything to go by, because it is riddled with inside baseball jokes about the entertainment industry (film and publishing). Though of course, because it is an adaptation of Percival Everett’s Erasure there is a risk that too many will see themselves in satire and shut down. While the majority of the audience laughed and guffawed where the beats called for it, there was one woman next to me who seemed more in line with the publishers pigeon-holing Black authors and the white judges who want to listen to Black voices, without listening to the Black voices in the room with them. There will be plenty of people who will cast judgment on this film without even seeing it, thinking that they know the contents of the film based on the trailer, let me tell you that the trailer only shows you a small fraction of the story.
The trailer for the film distills the story down to the act of Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (played by Jeffrey Wright) writing a satirical novel, relying on the tired and offensive tropes he hates, under a pseudonym that he originally titles My Pafology (he will retitle it later) after being told his writing isn’t Black enough and white publisher and filmmaker lapping it up. It takes the entire film and focuses on the part about the pigeon-holing of artists (particularly minority groups) and going from doing something you take pride in, to something you only want to sell, aka the commodification of art.
The film, while full of a lot of laughs, also has a lot of drama, as a family deals with loss, health and money concerns, and unresolved trauma from the past. Leslie Uggams, as the matriarch of the family whose memories are slipping away as Alzheimer’s arrives, is the catalyst for much of the film’s action. She provides a need that allows Monk to ignore the fact he created the thing he hates, has railed against, and will proliferate onto the market – because he needs money.
There is a great scene between Monk and Sintara (played by Issa Rae) where they discuss their POVs of Black writing. This scene added some great layers, rounding out the Monk/Sintara dialogue in the film, and it was something that Jefferson added to the story for the film. During the Q&A Jefferson spoke about how when he went to Everett to get the option rights, even though he didn’t have a feature credit to his name, he was given the option for 6 months for free to write and try and land it somewhere (at which point money could be given to Everett), because Everett could see how passionate he was. I don’t know what he specifically said in that meeting to walk away with a deal like that, but scenes like this, that expand on the heart of the piece, show me why he got that kind of deal.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t speak of the love stories in the film because that is a key aspect of the film and one of the things that are part and parcel of setting the film apart from the kinds of works My Pafology (I can’t type later title), was written as a rally against. The kinds of works that pigeonhole Black stories to tragic ends, drugs, and ghetto-speak. Not all the relationships are happy, Monk’s family carries trauma from their father and have yet to figure out healthy relationships. Though, Clifford (played by Sterling K. Brown), who is newly out of the closet, may be messy, but is enjoying the freedom of being out. However, it is Lorraine (played by Myra Lucretia Taylor) and Maynard (played by Raymond Anthony Thomas) that I wanted to bring up because it is especially rare to see a couple find love at their age in a film, making it extra special that it was a focus and something that brought joy to the rest of the characters.
To people who like to listen to scores, Laura Karpman does a lovely score here, which leans into jazz.
American Fiction is set for limited theatrical release on December 15th.
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