I went to see this movie for a second time today. In part because I enjoyed it so much the first time, in part because I had questions about it that required a second viewing.
Overall, I really think it's a wonderful movie, well-acted throughout.
But, as some previous viewers have remarked, it is almost two separate movies: the story of the Ellison family going through emotionally hard times, and Monk's decision to take on the "serious" fiction publishing establishment to show just how superficial they are when it comes to their publication of novels by and about Blacks.
There is a connection, yes: Monk convinces himself to publish a trash Blacksploitation novel in part by saying that he needs the money to take care of his mother, who is entering into dementia. But lots of great writers have written "easy" potboilers for money when their serious fiction wasn't making any. It would have been easy to assuage his conscience on that issue - as Sintara Golden evidently has - without developing the extensive family issues. Monk's agonizing about "selling out" is one of the least convincing parts of the movie, at least to me.
Those family issues are well developed, and often beautifully acted and filmed. But that does not mean they are really essential to what sets this movie apart as different and particularly interesting, at least as I see it.
So I would have cut back significantly on the family issues --perhaps even to the point of eliminating the sister Lisa's character, though she is well played by Tracee Ellis Ross -- so as to be able to develop the other aspect of the movie in two hours.
And there is lots that could be developed there. For example:
Where does Monk get a knowledge of urban Black English -- or at least what middle-class Americans imagine to be such -- if he grew up in an upper-middle-class family with a beautiful home and attended Harvard? We get an inkling of what might have been when we see him in bed watching a Blacksploitation movie for a minute or two, but this could have been developed into a significant, and funny, part of the movie. How would an upper-middle-class Black academic with an upper-middle-class upbringing go about learning "the lingo" well enough to fake out not just over-educated middle-class white readers, but also intelligent Black readers like Coraline? There could even have been talk of his trying to find his "roots," which urban ghetto life was not, tied in with the the fact that Leslie Uggams had starred in that series.
I would also like to have seen Sintara Golden's character developed further. She's obviously an intelligent woman, and in her scene with Monk during the Literary Prize committee lunch break we see her admit that she wrote her "ghetto" work to appeal to liberal white readers. But was that compromise easy for her? She says she did a lot of research. What sort of research?
She also catches Monk off-guard when he talks to her about "the potential" of Black people, which she says shows that he doesn't really believe that they have achieved anything of true value yet. This could be tied into the sort of fiction he has been writing so far. There isn't much to go on there, but his agent refers to his most recent novel as "the Persians" and Coraline says she has read his book "The Frogs." Has he been adapting Classical models to tell modern stories, like Eugene O'Neill? (We learn from the novel *Erasure* that that was indeed the case.) Does part of his feeling of insufficiency stem from interiorized anti-Black racism? There's little to go on in the movie as it now stands, but that might be a theme to develop. Sintara is intelligent and attractive; he could be attracted to her for all sorts of reasons, see in her both someone he dislikes because she is willing to sell out -- but why is that such a bad thing, as his agent asks him with the Johnny Walker bottles? -- and someone who is more comfortable being Black -- whatever that means to her -- despite her elite education.
And then there is the issue of the movie script Monk finally gives to the superficial movie producer, Valdespino. Why was the latter willing to abandon Monk's trash novel, which was evidently about life in the ghetto, for a story that ends with a tuxedoed man receiving a literary award? Valdespino's choice of endings is deeply cynical, and not stupid. But why did he make the switch, and what to? (In *Erasure* this switch doesn't take place. But in fact the movie deal is much less important in the novel, and does not lead to the end of the story, one of the particularly brilliant innovations created by the movie screenwriters for *American Fiction*.)
There are also hints at potentially interesting things that are introduced but then abandoned. When Monk starts to write his trash novel, he is sitting in a room surrounded by prints of Gauguin paintings. The young thug he creates, with the eye patch and the dew rag, is named Van Go. Why all those references to late 19th century French post-impressionist art?
When Monk first returns to Boston and visits the family home, the house-keeper, Lorena, tells him that he's not overweight, and that "back in Arkansas he'd be a beauty queen." A strange thing to say about an apparently straight man. But then, when Cliff arrives near the end of the film with two young boyfriends, we see that Lorena is not bothered by homosexuality at all. What does Lorena know, or think she knows, about Monk's past?
Again, this is a very good movie just as it is, and well worth watching. I guess it's a tribute to it that it kept me thinking long after I left the theater, considering how the already very good in it could have been developed even further.
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I was sufficiently intrigued by this film to go out and read the novel, *Erasure*, on which it is based. I was convinced that the novel would focus more on the critique of racism in the American publishing establishment, and that the family drama that several reviewers found less interesting would be much less important.
I was very wrong. If anything, the movie develops the critique of the publishing world, and often very cleverly. The three-part ending of the movie is completely new with the film. So is what development we see of Sintara Gooden's character. We never really meet her in the novel, and there is no discussion at all between her and Ellison. She is not on the five-person literary award panel of judges. Putting her on it, and thereby giving us even what little discussion there is between her and Ellison, was another great script writer innovation.
There are many other major differences as well, which probably explains why the film was titled American Fiction and not Erasure.
So, if this movie can make so many changes in riffing off the novel original, I will hope that a short tv series -- with the same actors, who are uniformly good -- will pick up from here and go on to explore some of the issues raised by the book and the movie.
Overall, I really think it's a wonderful movie, well-acted throughout.
But, as some previous viewers have remarked, it is almost two separate movies: the story of the Ellison family going through emotionally hard times, and Monk's decision to take on the "serious" fiction publishing establishment to show just how superficial they are when it comes to their publication of novels by and about Blacks.
There is a connection, yes: Monk convinces himself to publish a trash Blacksploitation novel in part by saying that he needs the money to take care of his mother, who is entering into dementia. But lots of great writers have written "easy" potboilers for money when their serious fiction wasn't making any. It would have been easy to assuage his conscience on that issue - as Sintara Golden evidently has - without developing the extensive family issues. Monk's agonizing about "selling out" is one of the least convincing parts of the movie, at least to me.
Those family issues are well developed, and often beautifully acted and filmed. But that does not mean they are really essential to what sets this movie apart as different and particularly interesting, at least as I see it.
So I would have cut back significantly on the family issues --perhaps even to the point of eliminating the sister Lisa's character, though she is well played by Tracee Ellis Ross -- so as to be able to develop the other aspect of the movie in two hours.
And there is lots that could be developed there. For example:
Where does Monk get a knowledge of urban Black English -- or at least what middle-class Americans imagine to be such -- if he grew up in an upper-middle-class family with a beautiful home and attended Harvard? We get an inkling of what might have been when we see him in bed watching a Blacksploitation movie for a minute or two, but this could have been developed into a significant, and funny, part of the movie. How would an upper-middle-class Black academic with an upper-middle-class upbringing go about learning "the lingo" well enough to fake out not just over-educated middle-class white readers, but also intelligent Black readers like Coraline? There could even have been talk of his trying to find his "roots," which urban ghetto life was not, tied in with the the fact that Leslie Uggams had starred in that series.
I would also like to have seen Sintara Golden's character developed further. She's obviously an intelligent woman, and in her scene with Monk during the Literary Prize committee lunch break we see her admit that she wrote her "ghetto" work to appeal to liberal white readers. But was that compromise easy for her? She says she did a lot of research. What sort of research?
She also catches Monk off-guard when he talks to her about "the potential" of Black people, which she says shows that he doesn't really believe that they have achieved anything of true value yet. This could be tied into the sort of fiction he has been writing so far. There isn't much to go on there, but his agent refers to his most recent novel as "the Persians" and Coraline says she has read his book "The Frogs." Has he been adapting Classical models to tell modern stories, like Eugene O'Neill? (We learn from the novel *Erasure* that that was indeed the case.) Does part of his feeling of insufficiency stem from interiorized anti-Black racism? There's little to go on in the movie as it now stands, but that might be a theme to develop. Sintara is intelligent and attractive; he could be attracted to her for all sorts of reasons, see in her both someone he dislikes because she is willing to sell out -- but why is that such a bad thing, as his agent asks him with the Johnny Walker bottles? -- and someone who is more comfortable being Black -- whatever that means to her -- despite her elite education.
And then there is the issue of the movie script Monk finally gives to the superficial movie producer, Valdespino. Why was the latter willing to abandon Monk's trash novel, which was evidently about life in the ghetto, for a story that ends with a tuxedoed man receiving a literary award? Valdespino's choice of endings is deeply cynical, and not stupid. But why did he make the switch, and what to? (In *Erasure* this switch doesn't take place. But in fact the movie deal is much less important in the novel, and does not lead to the end of the story, one of the particularly brilliant innovations created by the movie screenwriters for *American Fiction*.)
There are also hints at potentially interesting things that are introduced but then abandoned. When Monk starts to write his trash novel, he is sitting in a room surrounded by prints of Gauguin paintings. The young thug he creates, with the eye patch and the dew rag, is named Van Go. Why all those references to late 19th century French post-impressionist art?
When Monk first returns to Boston and visits the family home, the house-keeper, Lorena, tells him that he's not overweight, and that "back in Arkansas he'd be a beauty queen." A strange thing to say about an apparently straight man. But then, when Cliff arrives near the end of the film with two young boyfriends, we see that Lorena is not bothered by homosexuality at all. What does Lorena know, or think she knows, about Monk's past?
Again, this is a very good movie just as it is, and well worth watching. I guess it's a tribute to it that it kept me thinking long after I left the theater, considering how the already very good in it could have been developed even further.
-------------------------------------------------------
I was sufficiently intrigued by this film to go out and read the novel, *Erasure*, on which it is based. I was convinced that the novel would focus more on the critique of racism in the American publishing establishment, and that the family drama that several reviewers found less interesting would be much less important.
I was very wrong. If anything, the movie develops the critique of the publishing world, and often very cleverly. The three-part ending of the movie is completely new with the film. So is what development we see of Sintara Gooden's character. We never really meet her in the novel, and there is no discussion at all between her and Ellison. She is not on the five-person literary award panel of judges. Putting her on it, and thereby giving us even what little discussion there is between her and Ellison, was another great script writer innovation.
There are many other major differences as well, which probably explains why the film was titled American Fiction and not Erasure.
So, if this movie can make so many changes in riffing off the novel original, I will hope that a short tv series -- with the same actors, who are uniformly good -- will pick up from here and go on to explore some of the issues raised by the book and the movie.