‘American Fiction’ Starring Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown Explores the Many Ways You Can’t Put Black People in a Box — and It Deserves All the Awards

With five major Oscar nominations and a BAFTA win for Best Adapted Screenplay, there’s a lot of buzz around it Cord Jeffersonthe glorious directorial debut of “American Fiction” is about to succeed in a glorious crescendo.

A superb, astutely self-aware and outrageously funny drama about a frustrated black professor-writer’s literary prank gone awry, based on Percival Everett’s 2001 novel “Erasure.” Written for the screen by Jefferson, it’s the story of Thelonious Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), under the pseudonym Monk, the creator of smart, academic books that do not sell. Deeply irritated by the largely white publishing industry’s refusal to take a look at the African American experience beyond masking and blaxploitation, obsessive about “killer dads, rappers, crack” and their constant “fascination with black traumatic porn”, he decides one evening “Rub their noses in the horse bullshit they are asking for.”

The result was “My Pafology” – a book highlighting all the stereotypes about the Black community in obscene hyperbole, written by Monk under the pseudonym “Stagg R. Leigh” – an imaginary convict. “My Paphology” is Monk’s way of giving the middle finger to a literary industry that wishes to cut back the complex identity of its people to race, and race alone. But, to his surprise, the elite white publishing house doesn’t just take it at face value. For this, they provide him a ridiculous advance of $750,000. Even a distinguished Hollywood director approached him with a proposal for a film adaptation. Soon, the profession he had worked diligently over many years to construct snowballed, but in a completely unexpected way.

“American Fiction” is a scathing commentary on how we now have nurtured a culture that likes to stifle people into boxes, relegating the fullness, richness, and diversity of our human experience to a trivial category. But Jefferson fights with all his might. Perhaps his hero has unknowingly written the best novel in a genre he despises. But Jefferson doesn’t do silly things like that. He assures that his film is greater than just obvious racism. Along with Monk’s skilled disillusionment, there’s parallel turmoil inside his well-educated, upper-middle-class family.

The way Jefferson seamlessly blends the two dimensions of Monk’s life is harking back to a recent Andrew Scott film “We Are All Strangers” (2023). It’s a heartbreaking portrait of a lonely screenwriter who, in his old childhood home, begins to fulfill his deceased parents and check with them about the whole lot he never could because they died in a automotive accident when he was only 12 years old. Around the same time, he also begins to open up and fall in love with a young man who lives in the same constructing as him. Director Andrew Haigh’s delightful psychological fantasy, All of Us Strangers, is like a fever dream that can haunt you at unexpected moments.

While it’s a very different, sharply subversive and categorically humorous film, “American Fiction” hits just as hard. It greater than deserves all five Oscar nominations. Jefferson has been creating tragicomedy for hundreds of years. A former journalist, he has previously written for various highly acclaimed television shows – Succession (2018-2023), The Good Place (2016-2020), Master of None (2015-2021) – and won an Emmy Award for his work on the HBO series “Watchmen” (2019).

In American Fiction, his uncanny skill with the pen gives you a mirror to reflect on, encouraging you to query your deep-seated prejudices. The film’s dialogues deserve a detailed evaluation of their very own. He is piercingly sensible, razor sharp, unflinchingly honest, and crammed with irony and exuberance.

A couple of scenes stand out. There’s one where Monk is humming “My Paphology” late at night. When he writes dialogue, his characters – father and son – jump off the page into the room and start acting out the scene. Then there are all the conversations he has on the landline along with his white editors, each another outrageously silly than the last. Another standout feature is the sparring discussion he has with renowned creator Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), one other black author who he believes has made her popular.

It’s hard to assume anyone apart from Wright playing the touchy-feely, snobbish Monk. There is a lot noise inside and around him that it might crumble in the hands of a lesser actor. But Wright plays him with such assured restraint that I enjoy watching him unravel, turn out to be the butt of his own joke, unlearn, and then learn a little and loosen up his tight ass. It’s a good, career-defining performance that deserves not only critical acclaim, but additionally a shiny gold trophy.

“American Fiction”, which is currently competing for Oscars in the categories for Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Score and Best Adapted Screenplay, features an all-star forged: Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross, Erika Alexander, Issa Rae and Leslie Uggams. The film is now available to observe in theaters and rent on Prime Video.