'American Fiction' briefing

3 (out of 4)

            It’s rare that I review a debut unless it’s from some overzealous Hollywood actor or proven writer — having seen nothing Mr. Cord Jefferson has charged (namely The Good Place and Watchmen, sorry my TV interests practically don’t exist), nonetheless the winner of the People’s Choice Award at TIFF is no small thing in any year, and this time it bested The Holdovers and The Boy and the Heron. Should be damn good right?

Regardless of festival fanaticism, American Fiction would’ve had me curious from its tempestuous high concept alone: an African American professor and novelist dumbing his efforts down to meet the pandering place where authorship, audiences and pompous middlemen publishers all compromise some intellectual equilibrium — if somehow Cord had come away with a less scrupulously conceived screenplay and screen-display (based on Percival Everett’s even more impressively culturally reflective 2001 novel Erasure, though I’m not reading modern stuff if anything either, sorry my narrow mind measures movies mainly), he could have possibly been accused of the same shady solicitousness the film goes to great lengths to satirize in order to stir up conversation. It may be the approachable version of both Spike Lee's brilliantly brazen, incisive, hysterical minstrel-disassemble Bamboozled as well as Ava DuVernay's anti-cinematic lecture come to life Origin.

While this hit the People’s Choice Award requisites for the mixture of mischievous, politically provocative positing and feel-good, pathos-padded mainstream-primed fare, this kind of complete left-and-right-brain package doesn’t ask you to make personal or political compromises in order to enjoy, gradually outpaces your expectations just as you think you have the story’s angles all figured out. This meta-comedy-drama could have stripped a layer of self-awareness and maybe been better for it, but there’s no room to complain when American Fiction candidly invests in potentially trite but practically touching family dynamics with recognizable, relatable, flesh and blood figures within and without the family unit. Exceptionally vivid dialogue and an oscillation between bitter bite and quiet contemplation are met by every performer, particularly Sterling K. Brown, Issa Rae and of course Jeffrey Wright, who after so long on the outskirts of many features finally feels at home in the spotlight.

Sure, in classic left-wing demoralizing fashion, the white characters are drawn broad, senseless and stupendously out of touch — if its targets of clever dissection didn’t also include hypocrite liberals just like the last great satire of its kind Get Out, there would be a chink in Cord’s impenetrable armor. AS A WHITE MAN, I could laugh at all the jokes because I’M sooooo progressive, not mind-poisoned like closet racists or open ones. But even the cutesiest meta elements are well-realized, from his own Phucking Pafology come to life born from a fed-up imagination to a denouement seemingly inspired from Clue’s pick-your-own-ending freedom. There’s little cinematic craft outside of letting a fantastic, multifaceted screenplay sing for a very full less than two hours, and that’s more than alright with me. “It’s not supposed to be subtle” or whatever 'Monk' about his fake "urban" book, and the film itself has built-in excuses for its more mass-appealed race-baiting — the so-called skewering of Hollywood brown-nosing is more prevalent than its commentary on modern literature, and moreover the cultural frustrations expressed here are raw, real, and just the movie we need right now hehehahahoho.

But seriously, this isn’t like Black Panther where the praise from white audiences is a foregone conclusion, a prerequisite out of fear of criticism reversed back — American Fiction is actually punchy and pure enough for universal cinema regardless of the specificity of its dissonant zeitgeist. The film pretends to be cuddly as a cactus, but it’s got a soft, chewy center outside of a provocative, pointed shell. Say what you will about its many-folded stances on the direction and authenticity of black art, this screenplay was the definition of tact, particularly in its standout conversational climax. American Fiction is a cunning movie that also feels like it could be something more, still the preference for emotional clarity and a familial reality (as opposed to occasionally plucking for lower hanging fruit of cheap racial shots) and speckled, tactile commentary make for a killer cine-cocktail.