American Fiction (2023)
2023
R
117 Minutes
Thelonious “Monk” Ellison's writing career has stalled because his work isn’t deemed “Black enough.” Monk, a writer and English professor, writes a satirical novel under a pseudonym, aimi...
User Review
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WHAT I LIKED: Be it your race, gender or sexuality, your cultural identity plays a big part in defining who you are. But if you're part of a marginalised group, the chances are that identity will also limit your life chances.
Adapted from the novel by Percival Everett, that's what Cord Jefferson's 'American Fiction,' is all about, as it follows an author and literary professor nicknamed Monk (Jeffery Wright) coming to realise the distinction between having his life defined, and restricted, by his blackness.
From the off we see very clearly how his race negatively affects his career. He writes books about Greek mythology but they're seldom respected by his white colleagues and even end up in black fiction sections, and he's exasperated that publishers only seem interested in black writers who talk about the "black experience." But his way of dealing with this is to repeatedly deny that race even exists, and then to masquerade as a felon selling his life story after growing up "in the hood."
His book inevitably ends up becoming a bestseller, and that makes a brilliant point about how fickle the publishing industry and white consumers can be. But it also spurs an interesting arc in Monk himself who not only realises that the experiences he's satirising are real, but that in order to counter the restrictions he faces, race needs to be acknowledged rather than ignored. The story wraps that up by offering the audience three alternative endings - one violent, one righteous, and one romantic - directly asking them to consider what kind of fiction they would expect for this character.
That ultimately makes for a brilliantly thought-provoking story, but it translates especially well because of the film's nuanced characterisation and humour. Jeffery Wright plays Monk's intelligence and frustration extremely well, whilst the family cast around him are not only written to test and tease him about his superiority, but also as layered characters in their own rights. Then of course there's all the meetings with white publishers and academics who hilariously fetishise his work whilst he has to pretend to be this other character, and the sharp writing makes that as cutting as it is funny.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: Perhaps playing the majority of its scenes for humour undermines some of the serious impact of its story.
VERDICT: 'American Fiction,' brilliantly points a finger at how white people fetishise the black experience, and has its great central character come to a new perspective on how race defines his life.0 member like this review.
