American Fiction” is both a smart, funny satire of the way the white establishment pigeonholes Black artists, and a warmhearted if cool-eyed family drama.
No small reason for its appeal are the grounded performances by its starry cast, especially the central one by Jeffrey Wright.
Wright first made his mark in 1993 with his Tony-winning Broadway debut as the Black, gay AIDS nurse Belize in “Angels in America,” a role he recreated a decade later in the landmark television adaptation of Tony Kushner’s epic play. He has had a busy year in Hollywood, portraying Congressman Adam Clayton Powell as a smooth-talking villain in “Rustin,” and the gruff five-star General Grif Gibson in “Asteroid City.” Through February 11th, he is also the star of a retrospective film series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, entitled “American Fiction: The Characters of Jeffrey Wright,” which will screen a half dozen films (including “Basquiat” and “Angels in America”; see schedule below) that feature Wright, whom they bill as “one of the greatest Brooklyn actors of his generation” — a rather too-narrow accolade for such a consummate performer.
In “American Fiction,” an adaptation by first-time filmmaker Cord Jefferson of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure,” Wright portrays Thelonious Ellison, aka Monk, a middle-aged English professor and novelist whose life hasn’t been going well. He’s eating too much and sleeping too little. His students complain so much about his indifference to their sensitivities that the department head makes him go on a leave of absence. He can’t get his latest erudite novel published, a reworking of Aeschlyus’ play “The Persians,” because, as one rejecting editor puts it, “one is lost to understand what [it] has to do with the African-American experience.” His previously published novels are shelved in bookstores under “African-American Studies,” which so incenses him so much that he grabs all of his books and carries them to the “Contemporary Fiction” section. (“I’m just going to put them back after you leave,” the clerk says.) And to make all this worse, he has to witness first-time novelist Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) get a blockbuster bestseller for her very Black book, with the (scathingly satirical) title “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto.”
To make a point — which he assumes will be as useless as his book reshelving — Monk writes the most stereotypical novel he can conjure, which he entitles “My Pafology” (a deliberate misspelling of pathology) and commands his literary agent (John Ortiz) to send it out to publishers under a pseudonym, Stagg R. Leigh. His agent tries to talk him out of it. “You said you wanted black stuff,” Monk argues. “What’s blacker than that? It’s got deadbeat dads, rappers, crack — and he’s killed by the cops in the end. I mean, that’s black, right?” Theater lovers in particular will appreciate the one scene where we see Monk constructing a chapter, because it’s acted out by two over-the-top violent, drunken thugs, portrayed by Okieriete Onaodowan (who originated the roles of Hercules Mulligan and James Madison in “Hamilton”) and Keith David (whose Broadway credits include Shakespeare, Ibsen and August Wilson.)
Monk wrote “My Pafology” as a joke, but it hits the publishing world –and Hollywood — like thunder; they want it bad, and are willing to pay big bucks for it; “the most lucrative joke you’ve ever told,” his agent says. Monk at first refuses, but his agent points out: Monk can use the money.
And this is where the family drama comes in. After Monk is forced to take a leave from his teaching job in California, he moves back to Boston, his hometown, and reunites with the family he has kept at a distance – his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), who works as a gynecologist, his brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), who is a plastic surgeon, and his mother Agnes (Leslie Uggams.) The characters, and their relationships with one another, are finely, credibly wrought. Each of these characters also have their own dramas and traumas — Lisa is newly divorced, and works at a clinic that’s relentlessly picketed; Cliff came out as gay, after which his wife divorced him and his kids no longer speak to him; Agnes has dementia. We eventually learn that Monk’s father committed suicide a few years back (In Everett’s novel, we learn that it was in reaction to four heart attacks; we’re not told the reason in the movie, which makes it sadder.) Monk needs the money because his mother gets worse, and his siblings are unable to help.
The two halves of “American Fiction” unfold in tandem, the “Pafology” plot increasingly wild and wacky, the Ellison family more involving and touching. (Unlike Monk’s pathological characters, his own life has some sweetness in it; he develops a relationship with a neighbor of his family’s beach house, a public defender portrayed by Erika Alexander.) Some have found the disparate tone to be jarring. I found it deeply effective. Through the filter of race in America, the filmmaker is driving home a point famously made by Tolstoy in “Anna Karenina”: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” That includes Black families. The Ellisons in “American Fiction” represent the kinds of stories about Black people that aren’t being told as much as the pathological ones that the film satirizes.
“American Fiction: The Characters of Jeffrey Wright,” at BAM
Opens December 21
American Fiction
January 10, 6:30pm
Basquiat (1996) Dir. Julian Schnabel. With Jeffrey Wright, Michael Wincott, Benicio Del Toro.
“Jeffrey Wright… gives a performance of almost mystical opacity” — Roger Ebert
Jeffrey Wright could hardly have chosen a more mythical figure for his first starring role on film than Jean-Michel Basquiat. Determined to rise up through the heady New York art scene of the 70s and 80s, the American graffiti artist became the brightest star of neo-Expressionist painting and one of the most successful painters of his time—even developing a friendship with Andy Warhol (David Bowie, in an excellent turn). Made by Basquiat’s friend Julian Schnabel, this impressionistic portrait captures both Basquiat’s creative genius and self-destructive impulses with a riveting central performance by Wright.
January 10, 9:30pm
The French Dispatch (2021) Dir. Wes Anderson. With Benicio Del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Jeffrey Wright.
“Wright gives the movie its soul by communing with the figures who inspired him, resulting in one of his most distinctive and poignant performances.”— IndieWire
Billed as “an obituary, a travel guide, and three feature articles,” this love letter to magazine journalism overflows with director Wes Anderson’s signature flourishes: wry comedy, meticulous compositions, and an all-star ensemble. Stalwart collaborators including Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, and Bill Murray are joined by bravura Anderson newcomers like Elisabeth Moss, Timothée Chalamet, and Jeffrey Wright, who drew inspiration from James Baldwin for his portrayal of an African-American expat in the film’s stunning final vignette.
January 17, 6:00pm
Ride with the Devil (1999). Dir. Ang Lee. With Tobey Maguire, Skeet Ulrich, Jewel, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Jeffrey Wright.
Ang Lee’s first foray into the American West is a clear-eyed, complex look at the savage guerrilla warfare of Bleeding Kansas during the Civil War. It centers on a group of wild young secessionists, with Tobey Maguire leading a rich ensemble that includes Skeet Ulrich, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Jewel. Jeffrey Wright joins the cause as Daniel Holt, a formerly enslaved man who was freed by his childhood friend and now fights alongside him for the South. Ride with the Devil revels in messy emotions and human contradictions like the ones that guide Holt—even as it barrels towards its bloody conclusion in Lawrence, Kansas.
January 17, 9:30pm
Syriana (2005). Dir. Stephen Gaghan. With George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright.
“Guerrilla camerawork and bravura acting fuse to create a realism not unlike the edgy, off-kilter work of Cassavetes”—Zadie Smith, The Telegraph
A single deal reverberates from the halls of Washington, DC to the oil fields in Kazakhstan in this political thriller from Academy Award-winner Stephen Gaghan (Traffic). Against the backdrop of the Middle Eastern oil industry, Syriana weaves together multiple storylines—including Jeffrey Wright as an ambitious American lawyer in charge of a dubious merger and George Clooney as a CIA agent caught up in an assassination plot—into a rich tapestry of revenge, loss, ambition, and betrayal.
February 11, 2:00pm (with intermission)
Angels in America Part One: Millennium Approaches (2003)
Angels in America Part Two: Perestroika (2003)
Dir. Mike Nichols. Dir. Mike Nichols. With Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Jeffrey Wright.
Jeffrey Wright reprises his Tony Award-winning role as Belize, a gay nurse who winds up caring for conservative attorney Roy Cohn (Pacino), in Mike Nichols’ Emmy Award-winning adaptation of Tony Kushner’s landmark play. An expansive, poetic, and politically charged look at the 80s in America, Angels in America is a sweeping exploration of the social, sexual, religious and other issues facing the country as the AIDS crisis gains momentum.
