American Fiction 2023
This movie has been getting great reviews and this week was nominated for Best Picture. So it was nice that it showed up at my local bargain theater. I didn't know anything about Jeffrey Wright until I saw his great performance in The French Dispatch, but I figured the movie couldn't go wrong just by having him be in it for two hours. He plays a talented, but frustrated author who writes good books that few people want to read. He is frustrated that even though he doesn't write about African American topics, his books are still put in that section of the bookstore because he is black. Pressured to write more about the black experience, he writes a book as a joke with everything he hates about what he is being asked to do and, of course, it becomes a success. That's a funny concept and it gets fleshed out a little even though it is maybe a little too simplistic. Then it is blended in with the rest of his life which is in a bit of a crisis. It is not that different a setup than Dream Scenario, but is warmer and more serious. The movie takes a few easy potshots at well-intentioned white people who lap up gritty books about black people. I wish that the main character had a little bit more of a personal journey, but instead it seems like he is going on the journey, but it's not really sinking in. The stuff about being an author is almost a gimmick, but really that's the interesting part of the movie and his life is more of a distraction unfortunately. It's still interesting and writer and director Cord Jefferson does a nice job squeezing out some more from the book deal plot before the credits roll. It's a good movie, with some neat ideas and good characters, but the life story doesn't pay off as well as I would have liked.
Written: 26 Jan 2024