FENCES B+
USA (138 mi) 2016
‘Scope d: Denzel Washington Official
Site
Like being hit with a ton of bricks, this film has an
awesome power, yet the agonizing truth is the protagonists are stuck in a
period of history where the most they could hope for would leave them standing
still, as there was no possibility whatsoever of progress being made in black
America. That is the economic reality
from which this film was spawned, where few understood this as well as
playwright August Wilson, where this is the only one of his plays that he ever
wrote a screenplay for before his death in 2005. First, a word about playwright August Wilson,
who is to the black community what Eugene O’Neill may be to the whites, both
Pulitzer Prize winners who are known as gifted writers of dialogue, among the
greatest ever, where Wilson’s poetic language chronicling the black experience
in America is actually described as “music.”
Having never formally studied theater, Wilson credits the blues,
specifically Bessie Smith’s rendition of “Nobody in Town Can Bake a Sweet Jelly
Roll Like Mine,” Bessie
Smith - Nobody In Town Can Bake A Sweet Jelly Roll Like Mine YouTube (3:22)
as a defining moment in his life, as it made him recognize the poetry in the
everyday language of black America, providing the inspiration and freedom to
use that language in his own writing.
Wilson is best known for his unprecedented cycle of 10 plays, known as
the Century Cycle, one set for each decade, that chronicle the black experience
in the 20th century. Chicago’s Goodman
Theatre was the first theater in the world to produce the entire 10-play cycle,
spanning from 1986 to 2007, where two of the productions were world
premieres. All but one take place in
Pittsburgh’s Hill District, an economically depressed neighborhood where Wilson
was born in 1945 and spent his youth. Fences was originally a 1983 play,
winning the first of two Pulitzer Prizes for the author, the other being The Piano Lesson (1990), which was
turned into a made-for-TV movie in 1995, where the play opened on Broadway in
1987 winning Tony Awards for Best Play, Best Actor (James Earl Jones) and Best
Featured Actress (Mary Alice), returning in 2010 where it won Tony Awards for
Best Revival of a Play, Best Actor (Denzel Washington) and Best Actress (Viola
Davis). In a deal with HBO, Denzel
Washington is bringing all ten of August Wilson’s plays to the screen,
releasing one per year, where he will be the executive producer for them all,
though this first venture is with Paramount, with Washington acting, directing,
and producing, bringing over most of the Broadway cast and crew already
familiar with the work, where five of the six featured characters originally
appeared on stage.
Set in a working class district of Pittsburgh in the 1950’s,
the timing of the work is appropriate, as most white Americans have nostalgic
recollections of the 50’s, including Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, Sputnik and
the Space Race, Las Vegas, the Rat Pack, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and
the advent of television, including a nostalgic tribute to the decade with the
Fonz and Happy Days (1974 – 83), with
seven of ten Republicans today fondly preferring America as it was in the 50’s,
remembering it as an era of prosperity and good schools, living in the safety
of the suburbs where there were no problems to speak of and the American Dream
was still alive and well. Black Americans
have an entirely different view, as they remained segregated by a separate and
unequal society unable to earn a living wage, as they were unable to live or
eat or go to school with whites, attend the same church, or even the same
hospitals, requiring separate bathrooms and accommodations, where nearly 100
years after the Civil War, blacks remained legally discriminated against on
every front, forced to live in shabbier sections of town where life expectancy
was considerably lower while forced to take the jobs whites didn’t want. It is in the heart of this racial and
economic discrepancy that August Wilson sets his story, a conversational
chamber drama that showcases the larger-than-life personality of Troy Maxson
(Denzel Washington), a 53-year old garbage collector who struggles to
financially make ends meet, living pay check by pay check, arriving home with
his friend and work partner Bono (Stephen Henderson), both chattering away
while pulling from a shared pint of vodka, feeling upbeat and hopeful, as it’s
Friday, the end of the week, and more importantly it’s payday. Troy’s character speaks nearly uninterrupted
for the opening twenty minutes of the film, where we quickly learn he dominates
his household with an iron fist, where his natural charm is drowned out by his
bitterness, enraged that he’s routinely passed over by less qualified whites on
his job, remaining haunted by lost dreams, where he was once a promising
ballplayer in the Negro Leagues with hopes of playing major league baseball, but
his career was derailed by racial prejudice and a prison sentence until time
simply passed him by and he was too old to play. While he still has the braggadocio of an
athlete, claiming he was better than today’s black ballplayers and seen a
hundred men play ball better than Jackie Robinson, Bono cuts through the myriad
of self-delusions with the sarcastic quip, “I know you got some Uncle Remus in
your blood.”
Troy’s vacillating moods comprise the rhythm of the film,
with various characters jumping in and out of the picture, including his
long-suffering wife of eighteen years, Rose (Viola Davis), who chimes in when
he’s stretched the truth too far with his embellishments, but the humorous mood
turns on a dime to one of righteous anger when his grown son arrives, Lyons
(Russell Hornsby), a jazz player who barely scrapes by, asking to borrow money,
which is met with unending contempt for his habit of always arriving on
payday. It’s Rose that eventually gives
him the money while reminding Troy that college recruiters are arriving for his
younger son’s next high school football game, where Cory (Jovan Adepo) might be
offered a scholarship. But Troy
dismisses his son’s chances, reminding him that whites won’t let him into their
game, so he may as well look elsewhere to earn a living. His own failed experience taints the view of
his son’s existing possibilities, actually undermining his son’s chances once
the opportunity arises by refusing to sign the permission slip allowing
recruiters into his home, denying his chance to go to college, which only
exacerbates the hostility and anger Cory feels towards him, thinking it’s only
jealousy because he might be a better athlete than his father was. These relentless mood shifts of lost hope and
broken dreams recur throughout, leading to an intense examination of the harsh
realities of their lives, which doesn’t get any better, becoming a deep-seeded,
psychological examination of systematic despair, where the fence he intends to
build, supposedly to keep others out, is actually a suffocating experience
locking them in at the same time, becoming a metaphor for all the obstacles
placed in their path, like how to survive on the other side of the fence, as
blacks are routinely excluded from white neighborhoods, with racism so
ingrained into society, causing blacks to have to learn to play by a different
set of unspoken rules that exist only for them.
That is the underlying moral dilemma of the film.
Troy has a mentally damaged younger brother with a metal
plate in his head, Gabriel (Mykelti Williamson), whose brain was damaged by
shrapnel while serving as a soldier in World War II. We learn that Troy bought the house he lives
in by taking the money that was Gabriel’s compensation for his injury, while
Gabriel rents a room somewhere and wanders the streets aimlessly, seemingly
rootless and homeless, the kind of person people walk past on the street
without giving him a second thought.
Plagued by guilt, yet bordering on the supernatural, Troy believes he’s
gotten such a raw deal in life that he’s actually fought with the Devil just to
survive, becoming a ghostly presence bogging him down, eating away at him,
where we learn to appreciate what he’s overcome, but at the same time despise
the meanness and domineering attitudes that come with it, as the
hard-headedness and lack of sympathy that he displays towards others feels
punishing, especially when it’s aimed at Rose, who is among the more selfless
creatures on earth, yet the two get down into the muck in a knock-down, drag-out
fight that is as emotionally wrenching a scene as anything seen all year, with
Troy’s hypocrisy exposed, where Rose finally stands up to him and refuses to
budge, setting the stage for even darker misfortunes that lie ahead. In one of the more hauntingly beautiful
moments, expressed with unimaginable tenderness, women dressed all in white lay
their hands on Rose in an attempt to heal her damaged spirit. Despite Troy being the center of attention,
almost to the point of distraction, a living Sisyphus forever charged with
pushing that ball over the mountain, only to have to do it all over again, and
then again on into perpetuity, it’s Rose who is the heart and soul of the film,
where Viola Davis is a revelation in the role, offering her greatest performance
in what is ultimately a fitting tribute to all black women, becoming the
maternal symbol of grace that miraculously holds broken families together
during the harshest times, defying unimaginable odds, much like they did during
slavery times.
