This is as scathing a slice of social commentary as 2021’s Don’t Look Up ... and just as timely and relevant.
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| With his professional life taking an increasingly chaotic turn, Monk (Jeffrey Wright) finds joy in his slowly developing relationship with Coraline (Erika Alexander). |
These two qualities seem wholly at odds with each other, and yet Jefferson makes it work. The result is enthralling — by turns hilarious, heartbreaking, sensitive and blistering — from the first moment to the last.
And very, very clever.
Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) is a respected author and professor of English literature, with several thoughtful, critically acclaimed books to his credit. Alas, they’ve not sold well, much to his disappointment, and that of his agent, Arthur (John Ortiz, making the most of a small part). Worse yet, his newest manuscript has collected nothing but rejection letters.
The carefully worded reason, from each potential publisher? The book “isn’t Black enough.”
“They want a Black book,” Arthur sighs.
“They have one,” Monk snaps back. “I’m Black, and it’s my book!”
This fuels Monk’s ire over — to quote Jefferson, in the film’s press notes — American culture’s tunnel-visioned fascination with Black trauma, typified by the fact that books and films almost never portray Black doctors, professors or scientists, preferring instead to focus on Black rappers, drug addicts, gang-bangers and slaves.
Because that’s what sells to the white audience.
Monk also is impatient when it comes his students’ cultural sensitivities, insisting that only snowflakes would be bothered by a course in early fiction of the American South, which includes coverage of Flannery O’Connor’s The Artificial N- and Other Tales. This attitude doesn’t endear Monk to his departmental colleagues.
But the absolute worst comes when Monk’s presence on a Boston literary festival panel draws a pitifully small audience, because almost everybody is in the much larger hall that features Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), whose newly published first book, We’s Lives In Da Ghetto, has become a smash best-seller.
Her read-aloud excerpt makes Monk wince, since the content and fractured English clearly panders to readers seeking stereotypical stories of Black misery.
Watch Wright’s expression, in this scene, as Monk stands at the back of the hall. He slowly takes in the room, his gaze becoming ever more despondent, as he sees the audience hanging onto Golden’s every word. It’s a masterful moment of silent acting.
The Los Angeles-based Monk’s personal life is a mess. He’s long estranged from his mother, Agnes (Leslie Uggams), younger sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) and younger brother Cliff (Sterling K. Brown). This literary festival has presented the opportunity to visit them in their Boston family home, and the reunion is all over the emotional map.
Agnes is delighted to see all three of her children together, but Cliff’s relationship with Monk has been strained under the best of circumstances ... and, at the moment, the former is in crisis. Cliff recently blew up his marriage and turned his wife and family against him, by coming out of the closet and having a very public affair with a man; the result has made the youngest Ellison sibling an outcast.
Lisa and Monk share the strongest bond, even after a remove of many years. Their conversations are reflective, and Ross brings impressive depth to her role. After just a few short scenes, we feel as if we’ve known this woman for years, either as a close friend or member of our own family.
She and Monk tease each other relentlessly, and she playfully challenges his pomposity.
“Has something I’ve ever written changed your life?” he asks, in all seriousness.
“Absolutely,” she deadpans. “My dining room table was wobbly as hell until your last book came out.”
Jefferson’s script is laden with zingers like that, and to a degree they help Monk and his family mask harder topics. That changes abruptly with an unexpected tragedy that hits us like a body blow.
In part by way of distraction, and also in a fit of spite, Monk spends an entire night concocting a pseudonymous novel, My Pafology, laden with every Black cliché he can imagine. Mention must be made, of the marvelous manner in which Monk’s writing process is brought to life.
He orders an appalled Arthur to send it to the usual publishers, in order to make what Monk believes will be a telling point: that that lily-white environment contains absolutely the wrong people to be deciding what sort of Black fiction should be published.
Even Monk’s pseudonym is a joke that he’s certain everybody will get: Stagg R. Leigh.
(You know what’s coming, right?)
To Monk’s horror — and Arthur’s delight — the book immediately garners a high six-figure sale. Worse yet, the editors want to chat with Mr. Leigh, forcing Monk to speak and behave in the manner they’re expecting; Wright’s agonized reaction is priceless, and “Stagg’s” initial phone call with his white female editor is hilarious.
Back home, things have taken another dire turn. Agnes, already somewhat scattered, is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She’ll soon need full-time care: an expense that Monk can’t meet ... which forces him to embrace his ex-con alter ego, and the despised “joke novel,” for all they’re worth.
All of which gives Jefferson the opportunity to savagely skewer latent racism, cultural appropriation, the narrow window of “what sells these days” — which prompts an equally caustic shot at Hollywood deal-makers — and (Jefferson’s words again) the exasperatingly “reductive view of Blackness.”
Wright carries a heavy load throughout this film. Monk is an angry man, which prevents deep relationships. He’s aware of this to some degree, and Wright persuasively depicts all the nuances of this frustrated guy who hasn’t yet realized that if he wants the world to treat him with respect, he first must treat others with respect.
Wright never slides into caricature or exaggeration. As is true of all the characters here, he remains wholly authentic.
The one new bright spot in Monk’s life is Coraline (Erika Alexander), a neighbor he “meets cute” when she has an accident with a bag of groceries. Alexander makes her warm, flirty, funny and every bit as intelligent as Monk, without his airs.
Brown’s Cliff is tragic in an entirely different way. Unable to navigate out of the mess he has made of his life, he instead plunges more aggressively into destructive behavior. But he’s also intelligent — he’s a surgeon, after all — and quite perceptive, when the need arises. Brown is superlative during Cliff’s telling confrontation with Monk, toward the end of the film.
Myra Lucretia Taylor is loving warmth personified as Lorraine, the Ellison’ live-in housekeeper: a position she has held so long, that she’s part of the family. Taylor also is radiant during a key scene toward the end of the film: a moment when Monk suddenly realizes that Lorraine’s graciousness, no matter the circumstances, is a far better default response than his own.
The film’s moods, moral dilemmas and emotional upheavals are anchored by Laura Karpman’s charming jazz score ... which (no surprise) also is an affectionate tip o’ the hat to the famed jazzman for whom Monk is named.
American Fiction marks Jefferson’s directorial and screenwriting debut: as impressive and explosive a Hollywood entry as can be imagined. If his sharp script doesn’t garner an Academy Award nomination — along with other nods — there is no justice.
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