American Fiction – True/False?

4  Stars/4

For a movie experience of hilarity and pathos and a screwy, if not accurate, peek into the book publishing (and media) industry, I highly recommend “American Fiction.”  This is writer and producer Cord Jefferson’s directing debut and he got the tone and characters just right.  Based on Percival Everett’s novel Erased, this film examines the inane stereotypes our contemporary culture imposes on most of us.  In many cases it’s like pounding a square peg into a round hole – with enough muscle, it can be done – even if it doesn’t look right.

Let’s start with the star of this trope – Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), borrowed from the iconic black American jazz pianist and composer.  Our Monk is a sophisticated novelist of some renown whose writings, however diverse the subjects, have been glossed over and left him classified on book shelves as an “African-American writer.”  Monk comes from an upper middle class black family whose dad was a physician and whose two siblings have followed in their dad’s footsteps, to some degree. 

Sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) is an overworked physician in a neighborhood clinic.  Brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) is a west coast plastic surgeon who flaunts his recent “outing” as a gay man.  But Monk is the golden boy who inherited much of his father’s genius.  They all come together at the family’s beach home on the death of the family patriarch.  Mom (Leslie Uggams) is struggling with dementia while still holding by a tether to her children and her life.  In a running two-fold plot, we see the evolution of the Ellison family as well as Monk’s frustration with society’s obsession with blackness reduced to a cliché.

Monk’s agent, Arthur (John Ortiz), has just told Monk that his latest novel simply will not sell because I isn’t “black enough.”  To prove a point, Monk quickly hammers out a trashy black novel complete with bad-ass, gun toting characters.  He has authored the book as Stagg R. Lee (you can’t make up this stuff), a pseudonym because the author is ostensibly a fugitive from justice.  The publishers are all over the book – which is bound to be a best seller.  Monk is stunned and does everything in his power to dissuade the publishers from taking on the project, including retitling the book F-word.  No problem.  This is just the type of authentic blackness the white publishers are seeking.  And so it begins.

There is so much to recommend this movie, not the least of which is the careful selection of the characters.  But Wright is the real star.  Throughout the ridiculous turn of events, Monk remains true to himself and his intention to shine a light on the hypocrisy of the media in prolonging the lie of black mythology.  Wright is singularly masterful as he navigates the perils of sudden fame while staying grounded in his scholarly upbringing and his pursuit of reality.  All the while, the drama of his family life unfolds with a mixture of triumph and tragedy, joy and sorrow that pretty much represents our human condition.

This is a singularly fantastic movie that is not to be missed, and one which I will see again and again.  I saw this at the Park Plaza Cinema with friends Kathy, Tracey, Linda,  and the other Linda.