American Fiction

The tastes of the public at large when it comes to art are a constant enigma. Often works of great depth and intelligence are passed over while something perceived as lower quality catches hold in the public interest. American Fiction, Cord Jefferson’s debut film as writer-director examines this divide in a smart, satirical manner while also weaving in threads of family drama. The film loses its bite somewhat in the late-going, though it remains an interesting viewing experience, and is a terrific showcase for its lead actor, Jeffrey Wright.

The film opens in the classroom of Professor Thelonius “Monk” Ellison (Wright), who is teaching a class on the fiction of the American South. A white student objects to having a racial slur written on the chalkboard, to which Ellison replies “I got over it, I think you can too”. The student keeps pushing, and Ellison explodes. He’s called in for a department meeting. After trading barbs with another professor, Mandel (Patrick Fischler) about their respective writing careers – Ellison thinks Mandel’s work is populist airport-novel garbage, Mandel calls out that Ellison hasn’t published anything in years – Ellison is put on a politely-enforced leave. He soon receives a call from his agent Arthur (John Ortiz) that the publishing house that had been interested in his book isn’t going to buy it. Ellison uses his involuntary vacation to return to his hometown, where a nearby literary convention will allow him to hopefully shop his book while he checks in with his moderately-estranged family. While at the convention, he hears a reading by Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) from her new novel “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto”.

It’s everything that Ellison hates – minimizing the Black American experience to just poverty, drugs and violence. But the mostly white audience eats it up and commends Golden for her brave work. Meanwhile, at home, Ellison’s sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) is a tough nurse who takes him to task for leaving her with the responsibility of taking care of their aging mother Agnes (Leslie Uggams) who is showing signs of dementia. In a shocking turn of events, the relatively young Lisa dies of a heart attack in front of Ellison. At a family funeral service at their beach house, Ellison’s younger brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) returns home as well. Cliff is dealing with his own issues, having recently divorced and come out as gay.

Courtesy Amazon MGM 

Grieving and angry, Ellison sits down and writes his own version of a ghetto narrative. Titled “My Pafology”, he believes it to be broad and foolish enough to show the publishing community the joke of a box that it works to keep Black writers in. He demands that Arthur submit it. Arthur does so, though he is initially reticent. Perhaps not unexpectedly, “My Pafology” (later retitled Fuck in a very funny scene) sparks immediate publisher interest. Ellison has submitted it under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh, and so has to concoct a character for Leigh on the spot to handle negotiations over the phone. Playing up the joke of the book in his mind, he says that he’s an escaped felon, which of course just juices interest further. Amid exploding book sales and a meeting with a white Hollywood director (Adam Brody) who feels that he has cornered the market on the Black experience in movies, the film keeps returning to Ellison’s family.

He and Cliff argue over what to do with their mother, and about the legacy of their late father. There is also an excellent pair of plot threads dealing with romantic love. Lorraine (Myra Lucretia Taylor) is Agnes’s longtime housekeeper and is close to family for Monk. She falls in love with Maynard (Raymond Anthony Thomas), who works security in the beach community where the Ellisons have a house. During this same time, Ellison begins seeing his neighbor Coraline (Erika Alexander), who is sweet and intelligent, but dealing with an ex who is still hanging around. But Ellison is not ready to share his Stagg R. Leigh secret with Coraline, and it damages their relationship. Ellison is also chosen as a judge (along with Sintara Golden) for the Literary Awards, and it’s no surprise for the audience, but a source of great frustration for Ellison when his own book gets added to the nomination list.

Courtesy Amazon MGM

American Fiction is based on Percival Everett’s novel Erasure. With the family stories balanced to be just as important to the film as the literary jabs, this was an ambitious first feature film for writer-director Cord Jefferson. On the whole, he carries it off. The early sections dealing with Ellisons’s frustrations and the birth of “My Pafology” are very funny and very well written. The satirical elements, especially early on, cut deeply. As the film goes on, particularly in the last act, this element gets a little bloated and lost in a final push of meta. Perhaps it’s inevitable that in a world that still does try to keep Black creators in certain boxes, that there could be no truely satisfying resolution to this side of the story. But what is interesting is that while the satire cools off, the family drama becomes more of a focus, and I found it to be just as engaging. Jefferson does a good job balancing the heartbreak, estrangement, love, and comfort of family life.

Jefferson is helped immensely by a uniformly strong cast. Wright, long an outstanding actor in mainly supporting roles (he was the high point of the otherwise disappointing The French Dispatch), is given a great lead role here and he runs with it. He plays Ellison’s wide range of emotions throughout the film perfectly, and delivers some of the best lines of the film with a razor sharp wit. Sterling K. Brown, very funny in last year’s Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul, brings some real pathos to Cliff. Erika Alexander also shines, playing Coraline with a tired wisdom, and also with hope.

If American Fiction had been solely a sharp-edged satire or a thoughtful family drama, it may have been a great version of either. Pushing the two elements together leaves a somewhat messy, but still very entertaining film with one of the year’s best performances at the center of it.

American Fiction is in limited theaters, expanding to additional cities on December 22nd.