'American Fiction' Is A Lively Joke On What Makes A Book Popular
Hilarious in its societal underpinnings, American Fiction is a tale that's a scathing bit of satire that is clever, fun, and thematically uneven at times. Often, the film transitions from over-the-top antics to a heartfelt personal scene. It can be a bit of a jarring scene transition going from something so funny to so serious, but it's done with a direction of enough care to make it mostly work. For a directorial debut, Cord Jefferson does an impressive job making an ironic look at racial biases while being a heartfelt story about generations of families accepting to adjust to the times. What's currently accepted in the cultural ecosphere is something Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison's (Jeffrey Wright) mother, Agnes (Leslie Uggams), should learn to embrace. Her feelings about the LGBTQ community are questionable. At one point in the movie, she tells her son Cliff (Sterling K. Brown) she always knew he wasn't gay, when in fact he is. Does that revelation come across as a condemnation of homosexuality? Suffering from Alzheimer's, Agnes' mind isn't in the right place. But it does speak the truth.
The main hook to the story is the fake memoir Monk is conducting for profit. American Fiction's premise is about a moderately wealthy novelist and professor who writes a passage as a joke, which later becomes a book, which then becomes a sensation. It's like when James Frey wrote A Million Little Pieces and was exposed on Oprah for writing a fictional memoir. Monk's book is a simplistic, stereotypical black experience passing off as a personal memoir. Think of Push by Sapphire mixed with Boyz n the Hood, and you get the book Monk is writing. The complexities of a true novel don't interest the public or even the literary community.
It's the cheap drama that hooks someone. An existential novel about one coming to peace with oneself and the universe around them isn't as dynamic as a fugitive being chased by the police. Monk goes by the alias Stag R Lee, so nobody knows he wrote the book. Only Monk and his publisher, Arthur (John Ortiz), are in on the scam. Thelonious Ellison is well respected in the literary world. Getting his name attached to the pandering garbage he detests is unquestionable. To dig himself further down a mischievous hole, Monk pretends that Stag R Lee is a fugitive. He never shows his face on television or uses a real name.
How fast Monk writes the novel is done in a flash. The book is finished and published within the blink of an eye. It's structurally shaky as the film takes its time with the Ellisons, yet a brief amount of time with Monk writing his book. There is a great scene featuring Keith David playing out a passage from his book while Monk is writing his thoughts on the page, bringing the book to life.
The book plays a second plot next to the main story. The heart of the film rests on the mother. It's about Agnus losing her memory yet having a family to keep her secure. The film works best when it deals with Monk's fake book more than the family drama. How over-the-top things get is pretty darn funny. It's when the film slows down to focus on the family that it loses some gas. The Ellison's go through a lot and yet still are only mildly interesting. There's a strained yet functioning relationship between Monk and his siblings. Monk's had his quarrels with his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross) that are now mended, and he does his best to support his brother Clifford. A lot of the scenery with the family has good intentions but plays out as filler to the real material. There's also a love story in the film that could have been cut, and the movie wouldn't have lost much, albeit one particular scene.
The best parts, by and large, are when the film is tackling race. Monk's mock book is not only a representation of an illiterate population but also the foolishness of woke white people. Monk, under his Stag R Lee alias, can do anything, and the publishers will gobble it up. He goes as far as to pitch changing the title of his book from "My Pafology" (spelled incorrectly to sound black) to "Fuck." The whites embrace the pitch with open arms, accepting the title. The deeper Monk gets into his charade, the more lies he has to come up with. There's a particular scene where Monk confronts Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) about her stereotypically black book called "We's Lives In Da Ghetto." It's the very thing his book is lampooning, and here he is confronting one of those authors he detests. To him, Sintara is creating black trauma porn to feed off of market profit. Sinatra is an interesting character. She's an educated black woman who writes to the lowest common denominator to achieve success. Is her material heartfelt, or is she just phoning it in like Monk? From her perspective, her book is not contrived race-bait literature.
The commentary works beautifully, but the film's love story and family melodrama aren't as dynamic. Going from goofball comedy to personal family drama, American Fiction can get lost thematically. It wants to be funny and dramatic at different times. There's a lot of commentary underneath the family problems that deserves a more interesting dynamic behind it. It's the comedy in this dramady that makes the film work best. When American Fiction delivers the laughs, they're so big because they're so awake to woke culture gravitating towards some of the worst taste in literature.
