American Fiction

I have been looking forward to American Fiction ever since it premiered at TIFF so I was really excited to finally have a chance to see it at the Broadway last night.  It is a hilarious social satire but it also includes incredibly poignant themes about identity.  Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) is an uptight and curmudgeonly Black author and professor in Los Angeles whose books are critically acclaimed but not popular.  He attends a book conference in his hometown of Boston to try and sell his latest novel to a publisher and is dismayed when he hears a reading by best-selling author Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) because he believes that she is pandering to Black stereotypes.  He impulsively decides to write his own book featuring every offensive Black stereotype he can think of as a joke but, when his agent Arthur (John Ortiz) sells it for an exorbitant amount of money, he decides to publish it using a pseudonym because he needs the money to care for his mother Agnes (Leslie Uggams), who has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.  As the hype builds for his book (a movie deal and a possible literary award) and his relationships with his brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) and his girlfriend Coraline (Erika Alexander) deteriorate, Monk faces an existential crisis.  This features a powerful and scathing commentary on how the entertainment industry views the Black experience but it is as laugh out loud funny as it is thought-provoking.  This is juxtaposed with a compelling family drama about siblings coming to terms with the roles they have been playing all of their lives and how to break free from them.  However, the journey to understanding that Monk goes on is somewhat undermined by an unsatisfactory ending that leaves him back where he started as he gives in to a choice that he has criticized Black artists for making in order to succeed (my only criticism).  Wright gives a brilliant performance, especially with all of his interactions with Tracee Ellis Ross (as his sister Lisa) and Brown and his humorous code-switching dialogue with his publisher (Miriam Shor) and a Hollywood executive (Adam Brody).  The rest of the cast is also outstanding and I especially enjoyed Brown's affecting performance.  Despite the third act, I really enjoyed this movie and would definitely recommend it.