{"id":10706,"date":"2025-04-01T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=10706"},"modified":"2025-03-30T21:03:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T01:03:13","slug":"american-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2025\/04\/01\/american-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"American Fiction."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

American Fiction<\/em> is the first film adaptation of any of Percival Everett\u2019s thirty novels, although its resounding success means it won\u2019t be the last \u2013 an adaptation of James<\/a> <\/em>is already in the works (good!) with Taika Waititi possibly directing (so very, very bad). Directed by Cord Jefferson, who won the Oscar for his screenplay, the film adheres quite closely to the novel, which was called Erasure<\/a><\/em>, until the very end, when Jefferson takes some creative license that pokes a little fun at Everett\u2019s own ending but doesn\u2019t entirely stick its metafictional landing. (It\u2019s streaming free on Amazon Prime<\/a> or you can rent it on iTunes<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once again, we meet Thelonious \u201cMonk\u201d Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), a professor and author of arcane novels that don\u2019t sell, here in a new scene where he lashes out at a performatively offended white student in one of his classes, leading his employers to put him on leave. He travels to New York to meet with his agent, and to visit his aging mother (Lesley Uggams) and his sister Lisa (Tracee Ellis Ross), a doctor who provides reproductive health services. His mother is showing early signs of dementia, while we learn that his relationship with Lisa and their brother Bill (Sterling K. Brown) has always been distant. While traveling, he comes across a bestselling novel, We\u2019s Lives in Da Ghetto<\/em>, by Black author Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), an Oberlin graduate who has written a book that Monk thinks panders to white guilt, engaging in gross and dated stereotypes about Black Americans. Lisa dies very early in the film, in one of the most significant alterations from Erasure<\/em>, and when their mother clearly needs to enter assisted living, Monk suddenly has some significant financial issues. He sits down and writes a novel, My Pafology<\/em>, that parodies Golden\u2019s book and the benevolent racism of the publishing industry, intending (he says) to offend the editors who receive it. Instead, he gets a seven-figure bonus (25% higher than the figure in the book, which was written 25 years ago) and everyone wants to meet the fictitious author Stagg R. Leigh, whom Monk invents as he goes along. As his personal life becomes more difficult, the book becomes more successful, until he finds himself on the judging panel for the Literary Award \u2026 and his book is one of the leading candidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jefferson does a fantastic job weaving the twin narratives of the book \u2013 the family subplot and the Pafology<\/em> subplot \u2013 together in a way that feels fluid, since he lacks the natural transitions that come with chapter breaks, and the two only truly intersect a few times in the novel. He\u2019s kept the bones of the plot and most of the details are the same, although he changes a few character names (including Adam Brody\u2019s movie producer) and creates some overly dramatic scenes involving Monk\u2019s mother. There are also more outright laughs here than in the source, and the relationships between Monk and his two siblings are softened, which allows some fantastic scenes between Wright and Brown later in the film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wright is spectacular here \u2013 this is a well-written, three-dimensional character, and Wright just is<\/em> Monk. He inhabits this character in every way, and when Monk has to act as Stagg, Wright telegraphs not just his discomfort at playing \u201cBlack,\u201d but that this character was raised to not speak or act a certain way, leaving him flummoxed when he has to become Stagg R. Leigh on the phone and once in person. He\u2019s just as strong in the family scenes, showing how Monk struggles with his interpersonal relationships even with people he clearly cares about; he doesn\u2019t lack empathy or feelings, but \u2013 forgive the hackneyed phrase \u2013 sometimes he can\u2019t get out of his own way. Brown and Uggams are also excellent in their respective roles, with Brown, like Wright, earning an Oscar nomination for this performance; Uggams probably just doesn\u2019t get enough screen time to say she was robbed of a Best Supporting Actress nod \u2013 I don\u2019t think she passes the Judi Dench Barrier here \u2013 but she\u2019s superb in the limited time she gets, as is Erika Alexander as Monk\u2019s love interest, Coraline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wasn\u2019t bothered by Jefferson sharpening some of the edges and inserting some extra drama; Brody\u2019s movie producer character even says in the film at one point that a movie made from a novel can\u2019t be the novel, because you just don\u2019t have enough time, and I think that can also apply to character development. Even changing the manner of Lisa\u2019s death makes sense, because what happens in the book is tied to something larger that the movie would simply not have time to address, at least not in a satisfying fashion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ending, however \u2026 I will concede the argument that the book ends in a way that would probably not work on film. The movie might not even get made. I liked the ending of Erasure<\/em>, but it\u2019s unconventional, and would have been even more so in a movie. Jefferson\u2019s solution is creative, certainly, but I\u2019m not sure it works. Metafictional twists like that one are hard to pull off, and if you start thinking about this one, you\u2019ll probably end up with a headache. The final, final shot, though, is excellent, so maybe it\u2019s best to just not ponder the climax too thoroughly. Adapting a book as rich and sardonic as Erasure<\/em> could not have been easy, and Jefferson managed to get the tone right without having to make any significant changes to the meat of the novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve seen nine of the ten movies that were nominated for Best Picture in this year, and I\u2019d put American<\/em> Fiction<\/em> pretty comfortably in the middle of the group. The Zone of Interest<\/em>, which I didn\u2019t see until November of last year and never wrote up, would be my top choice, and I wouldn\u2019t put this over Past Lives<\/a> <\/em>or Oppenheimer<\/a><\/em>, but it\u2019s in the next tier with Barbie<\/a> <\/em>and The Holdovers<\/a><\/em> for me. Wright never had a chance to beat Cillian Murphy for Best Actor, but if this movie were going to win any award for anything, he would have been my pick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American Fiction is the first film adaptation of any of Percival Everett\u2019s thirty novels, although its resounding success means it won\u2019t be the last \u2013 an adaptation of James is already in the works (good!) with Taika Waititi possibly directing (so very, very bad). Directed by Cord Jefferson, who won the Oscar for his screenplay, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1357,1383,1380,1457,1379,161,215],"class_list":["post-10706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2023-movies","tag-2024-best-actor-nominees","tag-2024-best-adapted-screenplay-nominees","tag-2024-best-pic","tag-2024-best-supporting-actor-nominees","tag-highly-recommended","tag-movies","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10707,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10706\/revisions\/10707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}