Friday Faves and Feels #3: American Fiction

Nominated for the "Best Picture" Academy Award, and With Good Reason

I don’t review movies. I’m not particularly great at judging art. If I leave a movie with a strong opinion I usually stand by quietly until someone else expressed the opinion I shared. I once watched an entire movie at the theater wishing I could just leave. Trouble was, my wife and I were with another couple. I didn’t want to offend them by leaving. Later we found out they didn’t like the movie either and also wanted to leave¹.

Or, more recently I recently saw Napoleon staring Joaquin Pheonix. I thought it was terrible. I wasn’t sure why and questioned whether I really understood it. Surely I was missing something. I didn’t learn anything about Napoleon other than he really liked sex.

Then I heard some reviews and discovered I wasn’t alone. Turns out the movie was missing something called “character development.”

Interesting concept.

The consensus was in fact, that Napoleon was a terrible movie.

But usually my review of movies involves little more than the question, “Did I like it?”

I liked American Fiction. It made me laugh. It made me think. And, it made me uncomfortable. I’m recommending it for all of these reasons.

American Fiction has been nominated for Best Picture by the Academy Awards. Of the others nominees I’ve seen (Barbie, The Holdovers, and Oppenheimer) it is my pick². Based on the 2001 novel Erasure by Percival Everett, it is the story of a struggling author-professor who is frustrated by “black books” which he sees as being full of unfair stereotypes, mostly because they’re untrue to his lived experience as a black person. In response he writes a satirical book full of the stereotypes he despises. Much to his dismay, white liberals eat it up as a masterpiece.

A few of the actors you might recognize are Jeffrey Wright (Westworld), Tracee Ellis Ross (Blackish), and Sterling K. Brown (This Is Us). It’s well cast, and I found the characters believable.

It just occurred to me that I’m recommending a movie staring a guy named Jeffrey portraying a writer battling preconceived ideas about who he is versus who people think he is and sometimes tell him who he should be.

Um, yeah…this feels somewhat relatable.

This is where I find the genius of the movie. I, a white guy, feel incredibly relatable to the struggles of the protagonist, a black guy. He’s even dealing with the decline of a loved one, a subject I’ve written about recently. The trials he faces are trials we all face, authors or not. But I also found myself identifying with the white characters, who generally come off as well-intended buffoons.

And to be clear, it’s the buffoonery part that rang familiar. It’s the well-intended confusion, the misdirected anger, and the not knowing how to care effectively. I’ve been there. I sometimes wonder if I’m not as helpful as I think I am. I linger in this place somewhere between white guilt and white fragility which most often leads to a place of white petrification.

Consider the opening scene. Professor Ellison sits in front of a whiteboard. The title of a Flannery O’Connor book with the n-word is written on the board. A white student proceeds to lecture Ellison about how inappropriate the word is, and that it makes her uncomfortable. In that moment, there was only one person I could identify with, and it wasn’t Professor Ellison. Fortunately for me, this would have been one of the circumstances where I knew to keep my mouth shut. The student and I did not have that in common. You can watch that scene below.

So, I recommend American Fiction to you. Watch it if you like to laugh. Watch it if you consider yourself a thoughtful person. Watch it if you’re willing to be challenged. It is in theaters or available to stream on Amazon Prime. I purchased it for $20.

Opening Scene:

A Second, “R-Rated” (and I’d argue more true to life) Trailer

1. The movie was Me, Myself, and Irene.

2. Sorry, son.