Director: Cord Jefferson
Genre: Drama/
Comedy
Runtime: 117
minutes
Year:
2024
Starring: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown, Issa Rae, Keith
David, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Erika Alexander, Adam Brody, John Ortiz, Raymond
Anthony Thomas
Description: A novelist
(Jeffrey Wright) who’s fed up with the establishment profiting from Black
entertainment uses a pen name to write a book that propels him into the heart
of the hypocrisy and madness he claims to disdain.
Review: In “American Fiction”, a struggling writer is offered a big movie deal
for his purposely steretype-filled, accidentally successful novel Fuck. The movie
applies critique of the literary world from Percival Everett’s 2001 satirical
novel “Erasure” to today’s film world.
When author Thelonious “Monk”
Ellison hears from his agent that his books ‘aren’t black enough to sell’, he
writes a novel filled with black stereotype out of frustration. He want the
book to hold a mirror up to the literary world, about their worship of real and
raw stories about the struggles of black people. He calls the book Fuck, pretends
it was written by a fugitive criminal and thinks that makes it unpublishable.
Of course, it becomes a raging success. He gets a 750 thousand advance and a
movie deal.
Debuting director Cord Jefferson
based the screenplay of “American Fiction” on the 2001 satirical novel “Erasure”.
The criticism of the literary circuit from “Erasure” clearly dates back to the
turn of the century. “American Fiction” shifts the focus to a critique of Hollywood.
The actual focus is of course Ellison’s personal life.
Ellison is the sole writer
in a family of doctors. They own a beach house and have a live-in help. When h
is fired as a literature professor at a university in California, de decides to
visit his family in Boston. He dislikes them. His brother and sister have
always resented him for being his father’s darling. What follows is a personal story.
I absolutely loved “American
Fiction”. An underdog at the Oscars of 2024, that will most likely not win a
single award, but really deserves a ton of praise. Not only the movie and its
story, but also for actors Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown. Go watch this
film, it’s streaming on Amazon Prime.
Rating: 5/ 5
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten