Editor’s Note: Gene Seymour is a critic who has written about music, movies and culture for The New York Times, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly and The Washington Post. Follow him on X @GeneSeymour. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. View more opinion on CNN.
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Books are books and movies are movies, and there are some things books can do that movies can’t — and vice versa.
One thing the movies don’t do much is make thrilling features about people who write books for a living — unless, as with Kathleen Turner’s romance novelist in 1984’s “Romancing the Stone,” they’re running from bad guys in exotic locales.
So, consider “American Fiction,” for starters, as a different, if no less daring leap into adventure — a high-wire act, risking contempt, indifference or box-office failure. Industry pundits have higher hopes for the movie, which has gotten two Golden Globe nominations, Oscar buzz and much critical acclaim.
The movie’s protagonist is kind of a critic’s darling, too. Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) writes the kinds of books that are artful, intelligent, maybe even innovative, but don’t make a lot of money. Being an African American, Ellison is constantly told that the reason his books don’t sell, or even get published, is because they’re not “Black enough.”
Thus, Ellison earns most of his living as a college professor. He refuses to compromise his integrity by writing what publishers and the public expect from him.
He’s also uncompromising as a teacher: When he teaches a class in Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “The Artificial N—-r,” one of his White students insists he removes the n-word because seeing it disturbs her. He curtly tells her that he’s heard that word hurled at him abusively for most of his life. “If I can get over it,” he says to her, “you can, too.” She leaves the classroom in tears. His bosses encourage him to take time off.
That’s at the very start of “American Fiction,” adapted by first-time feature director Cord Jefferson from Percival Everett’s 2001 novel, “Erasure.” Already you can see how Jefferson, who made his reputation writing scripts for such edgy TV series as “The Good Place,” “Watchmen” and “Station Eleven,” is stirring the pot and daring his audience to understand too quickly what the movie is up to. “Oh, so it’s supposed to be an attack on political correctness, right?”
Not even close. Ellison’s time-out from teaching is, saying the least, fraught. His sister (Tracee Ellis Ross), a doctor, dies suddenly just as their mother (Leslie Uggams) is showing signs of dementia. He needs more money than whatever his published books are earning.
How to get it? Maybe by being … Black Enough? At least as Black, anyway, as “We’s Lives In Da Ghetto,” a novel about impoverished Black life written in “street” patois by Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) that’s become a best-selling phenomenon.
Ellison seethes. (Wright’s masterfully orchestrated slow burns are wonders to behold.) But his financial straits force him himself to write “My Pafology,” under the pseudonym, “Stagg R. Leigh.” The movie shows him at his desk pounding out a saga of thugs and drugs and dysfunction so hackneyed that it’s practically a parody. Not altogether to his surprise, his agent (John Ortiz) tells him they have a surefire hit on their hands. White publishers and publicists swoon over what they see as “My Pafology’s” tell-it-like-it-is authenticity.
Meanwhile, life as Ellison’s really living it goes on as he struggles to convince his mother she needs full-time care while trying to reconcile with his estranged brother (Sterling K. Brown) and kindle a romance with a charming lawyer (Erika Alexander), who’s moved into the Massachusetts beach house across from his family’s.
Such is the core tension “American Fiction” cunningly sets up: the contrast between the faux underclass-ghetto kabuki Ellison’s successfully peddling and the very real and often poignant interpersonal relationships of his personal life.
The movie’s satiric arc, with its broad depictions of White editors and show-biz types grooving on Stagg R. Leigh’s street cred, is nicely handled as is the crafty depiction of “My Pafology’s”…