Frustrated author finds stereotypes sell in this biting satire
The hilarious trailer for “American Fiction” might leave you unprepared for the actual movie, which is funny at times but also sober in tone and measured in pace.
It seems writer-director Cord Jefferson, in his feature debut, has the confidence to slow down and let his movie breathe, knowing his audience is with him.
Based on the 2001 novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett, “American Fiction” tells the story of a serious Black novelist, Monk (Jeffrey Wright), who has critical acclaim but little commercial success. Already upset that his agent is having trouble placing his new book with a publisher, Monk becomes angry watching other Black novelists ascend to the heights by trading on stereotypes.
In an early scene, he goes to a book convention, where a young Black novelist (Issa Rae) reads from her latest work, “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto.” As she reads an excerpt that begins “Yo, Sharonda. Girl, you be pregnant again!,” the white liberal ladies in the audience respond in teary-eyed reverence.
Disgusted, Monk takes on a pseudonym and writes his own “ghetto” novel that he calls “My Pafology.” But what he conceives of as a bitter joke is taken as real, and suddenly he has the financial success he has always craved.
If you’ve read “Erasure,” you can especially appreciate what Jefferson did in adapting the novel. He visualizes Monk’s writing process with characters popping up in the room as he works. He also takes dramatic events that Everett only hears about in the novel and has them happen onscreen.
Moreover, Jefferson mutes Everett’s indictment of Black artists who are complicit in their own commodification. For example, the novelist played by Rae is much more sympathetic in the movie than in the book. But overall, Jefferson sharpens, streamlines and emphasizes everything that Everett left latent or hazy.
Surprisingly, the movie’s satire of the book business only makes up half the story, or less. It’s sprinkled in with the larger action, which involves Monk’s return to his childhood home, his reunion with his sister (Tracee Ellis Ross) and brother (Sterling K. Brown), and his caring for his increasingly demented mother (Leslie Uggams). “American Fiction” smoothly juggles its two parallel worlds, Monk’s relentlessly real family life and his increasingly absurd literary career.
Jefferson deserves credit for this harmonious blend of tones, but there’s no underestimating the impact of having a great actor at a movie’s center, holding the disparate elements together. Wright is always as good or better than the role allows him to be. But he has never had a role this full and multifaceted.
Wright’s Monk is a confident man but a disappointed one. He’s an artist who knows he’s smarter than everybody but also knows that it does him no good. Wright gives Monk the disconnection of an observer, which helps to explain his problems with his family. But that also makes him a funny straight man, watching in misery at what passes for art in the mainstream marketplace.
Wright makes Monk’s long-suffering anger felt, as when he goes into a bookstore and finds his earlier novels in an African American section along with other authors with whom he has nothing in common besides race. Then a scene or two later, Wright is actively funny, assuming the persona that Monk has created, as an escaped convict/novelist, and scaring publishers and Hollywood types looking for the thrill of the real.
“American Fiction” is not a perfect film. The book trails off at the finish, and though the movie comes up with something better, the end still doesn’t feel ideal. But none of that matters as much as it might, because Wright gives the perfect performance.
Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes
Rating: R (some drug use, brief violence, sexual references, language throughout)