American Fiction

UK Release Date. 2 February 2024
Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 57 mins
Director. Cord Jefferson
Cast. Erika Alexander, Adam Brody, Sterling K. Brown, John Ortiz, Issa Rae, Tracy Ellis Ross, Leslie Uggams, Jeffrey Wright.
Rating. 62%

Review.

American Fiction marked the feature-length debut of screenwriter Cord Jefferson, whose previous television credits included The Good Place and Watchmen. Adapted from Percival Everett's 2001 novel, Erasure, the film follows the wonderfully named Thelonious Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) - who friends and family call Monk - an academic writer whose stagnating career has left him embittered and disillusioned with the literary world. The bulk of Monk's ire is targeted at what he deems the ghettoisation of black writers and stories which reduce black people to tales of poverty, criminality, street violence and incarceration. Monk seeks to offer a different narrative about black life, one that isn't confined to hardship, pain and tragedy.

There's no denying, that it's wonderfully rich material, especially as a doleful family melodrama runs in tandem, which charts Monk's various familial and romantic woes. Jeffrey Wright in a wonderful performance makes the most of every nuance of Monk's complex character, as the misanthropic writer finally finding success in a way he despises. But the film's bold intentions are swept up in a mire of tonal indecision and the film begins to meander as first Jefferson, and then Monk, seems to lose the strength of his convictions. The ending itself feels a little cheated with a meta-plot device where Monk offers us several (though none particularly satisfying) different possible conclusions. This technique may be tolerable for the likes of Wayne's World, but the weak, overdiluted resolution does not correspond with the intelligence depicted in the early part of the film.