‘American Fiction’ movie review: a sharp-edged black comedy
Screenwriter Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut is a hilarious, sharp-edged black comedy-drama, positively dripping with irony and multiple levels of sarcasm. Adapted from Erasure, Percival Everett’s novel in diary form, American Fiction takes on issues of identity, racial stereotyping, and the role of literature in either telling minorities’ stories or pigeonholing them. The plot is reminiscent of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, but this film is at once more sober and more mischievous.
As the film opens, protagonist Thelonius ‘Monk’ Ellison (played by Jeffrey Wright), a Black novelist and professor of English literature, is having professional difficulties. His students complain that he refuses to redact racially sensitive material from classic literature, resulting in a request that he take time away from the university. At the same time, his novels are not hugely successful; publishers feel it is because his fiction is “not Black enough”. When his latest novel is upstaged by a young writer’s work, purported to give a realistic view of Black American life (titled We’s Lives in Da Ghetto), he is angry, frustrated, and offended by Black stories being limited to tales of poverty, addiction, crime, and dysfunction.
In a fit of pique, Ellison begins writing a new piece, an exaggerated parody of the kind of “Black fiction” he despises. The actual writing of the book is creatively filmed to show Ellison’s invented characters in the room, alternately acting out his comically stereotypical ghetto thugs’ adventures as Ellison writes their dialogue and breaking character to discuss language and plot development with Ellison. The manuscript, given the working title of ‘My Pafology’, is handed to his agent largely as a joke.
Things get complicated when a significant publisher, not recognising the material as satire and welcoming the inclusion of “diverse voices”, enthusiastically accepts the novel and makes Ellison (under a pen name) an enormous offer. The book’s popularity spirals out of Ellison’s control, leading him into an amusing and increasingly complicated process of deceit, impersonation, and softening of ethical boundaries. The humour comes from Ellison’s uninformed portrayal of the imaginary, street-smart writer of My Pafology, as well as the supposed writer’s ready acceptance by others who are clearly seeing what they expect to see.
But there is more to the story. Much of the film’s focus is on Ellison’s personal and family life, as he deals with estranged siblings, serious illness in the family, grief, and unsettling revelations about family history, along with a promising relationship that may be compromised by Ellison’s secret. None of the issues are race-specific, merely human relationships and problems, in contrast to the dire material in what Ellison refers to as “Black trauma porn.”
The ongoing family drama continues in parallel to the tale of Ellison’s double life as a writer and is a moving and complex story in itself, featuring excellent work from a well-chosen ensemble cast, including Tracee Ellis Ross as Ellison’s down-to-earth sister, Sterling K Brown as his unreliable brother, and veteran performer Leslie Uggams as his mother, all enhancing Jeffrey Wright’s letter-perfect performance as Ellison.
The humour in American Fiction is biting, topical, and often unexpected. No one is completely safe from satire in American Fiction, from the clueless publishers who accept Ellison’s book as a genuine memoir to the self-congratulatory “supporters of diverse voices” who buy it. Even the central character is gently mocked for his literary pretensions and his dismissal of any racial issues that don’t affect him directly. Many of his beliefs are called into question over the course of the film, sometimes in surprising or ridiculous ways, and no one’s point of view can be safely dismissed.
As the situation grows increasingly complicated and in need of a resolution, the plot takes a series of unexpected and beautifully ironic twists, providing a creative and cheerfully mocking finale to one of the most enjoyable satirical films of the year.