Fast Film Reviews

What playwright August Wilson presents in Fences is a portrait of the African-American experience. This is an ensemble piece as seen through the eyes of Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington). The setting is 1957 in the backyard of an urban home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He lives with his wife Rose (Viola Davis) and their son Cory (Jovan Adepo). Troy toils as a waste collector along with his friend Jim (Stephen McKinley Henderson). Troy once played in the professional Negro Leagues many years ago but never graduated to playing baseball in the Majors. This is still a bone of contention with him. Troy’s older brother (Mykelti Williamson) also lives in the same neighborhood. He is mentally impaired from a head injury he received in WWII. Troy’s adult son (Russell Hornsby) from a previous relationship occasionally drops by.

August Wilson’s Fences is indeed a seminal work. The screenplay here is solely credited to the author who passed on in 2005. Fences originally began as a staged reading in 1983 at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. By 1987, the theater piece was received with thunderous acclaim. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama, the Tony Award for Best Play and the Drama Desk Award. August Wilson’s words need no correction. The script is already focused. Wilson takes a much broader, almost unwieldy subject, and then examines it in a more manageable arena. There really isn’t much plot. Just a series of compelling vignettes. Ah but those sketches are gold.

If there is a failing, it’s that this is not very cinematic. The drama benefits from the immediacy of a live performance. The entire production takes place either in his home or out in the backyard. Star Denzel Washington, who also directs, makes no attempt to disguise the play from its stage-bound origins. Granted that would have required some creative changes. The source material has an extremely limited setting.  Sometimes that can work to an advantage but here it’s a liability. The inherent separation of a movie keeps the audience’s engagement a bit more remote. It’s still a fascinating watch, but it loses something in its translation from stage to screen.

What really elevates Fences is the acting. This is a richly written ensemble pieces that heavily relies on powerful performances. Denzel and Viola are reprising their roles from the 2010 Broadway revival. [Incidentally, the original 1987 cast featured James Earl Jones and Mary Alice in those parts.] Needless to say, Washington and Davis know their characters inside and out. Denzel is extremely good and Viola is extraordinary. A woman so fully formed that I was even more drawn to trying to understand this individual. She fascinated me. It may be Troy’s story in that every part exists to reflect his personality. However, I found myself sympathizing with her plight a lot more than her husband’s. She seizes attention whenever she is on screen. The studio may have marketed her achievement as a supporting role to secure an Oscar nomination (and possible win), but she is no doubt equally important in this context. It’s her authentic portrayal, as well as the subdued work of Stephen McKinley Henderson as Troy’s friend Jim, that I will remember long after having seen the film.

12-29-16

Lion wrecked me. More specifically, it captivated my feelings by extracting genuine emotion. Although he’s directed some TV (Top of the Lake on the Sundance Channel in the U.S.), Lion is the first feature film from Australian director Garth Davis. His impressive supervision guides this remarkably well-composed debut. It helps that he’s working from a masterful screenplay. The heartfelt adaptation penned by screenwriter Luke Davies is based on the autobiographical book A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley (with Larry Buttrose). So yeah it’s a true story. That adds to its grandeur. But this adventure about family and identity would be a powerful saga regardless. The account is divided into two distinct halves. Both need to exist to properly tell what happened, but one is a bit more affecting than the other.

The tale concerns Saroo, a 5 yeard old Indian boy who is separated from his sibling. One night, his brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate) goes out to look for work and Sarro begs to come with. He agrees to take him, but Saroo becomes too tired to walk. Guddu tells him to rest on a bench at the train station platform and he’ll come back for him. Hours pass and when he awakes, Guddu is nowhere to be found. Thinking his brother is on a train stopped nearby, he climbs aboard. After awhile, he falls asleep and the train takes off. He is transported nearly a thousand miles away from his home. When it finally stops, he is in an unknown world. He can’t read. He doesn’t know the name of his hometown. He can’t even speak the local Bengali dialect, only Hindi.

In the more absorbing first half, the narrative perfectly captures the panic of being lost in a strange place. India’s homeless children roam the streets in groups. Their instant camaraderie is touching but a circumstance that is borne out necessity. The many dangers these homeless children face is highlighted, a child kidnapping ring for one. It’s an unsettling portrayal of a real problem. Young Saroo Brierley is played here by actor Sunny Pawar and he’s a natural. I cannot fathom how scary it was for Saroo to endure such a terrifying odyssey away from home and family, but Pawar’s scrappy performance perfectly captures his struggle. He seizes your attention as the main protagonist in the first half.

The second half is where all the famous thespians show up. Yet interestingly it’s less effective. Of note is Dev Patel. He shows up to play the adult version Saroo, now living in Austrailia. Patel is an actor transformed. His obsequious hotelier in the Marigold Hotel films was a cloying stereotype. Lion sees the long haired bearded performer reborn as a more rugged looking leading man. His swarthy good looks paired with a more somber demeanor. He hides a longing for the mother and brother he lost years ago with his head buried in academic studies. Patel is supported by a couple of well-known stars: Rooney Mara as his girlfriend/fellow student and Nicole Kidman with David Wenham as an adoptive couple. I’m purposefully sidestepping the details of how Saroo got to this point because I think the movie is more compelling the less you know. Needless to say, details about his former life remain in his mind. He begins to research whatever became of his family. Those scenes dramatically unfold in a section that somewhat plays out like an advertisement for Google Earth.

There was a time when a picture like Lion would have easily won Best Picture. Beautifully shot and lovingly told, this is a grand epic that spans continents and decades. Changing tastes have maligned these kinds of dramas with derisive adjectives like sentimental, melodramatic or, heaven forbid, old fashioned. The production is none of those things. What it represents, is one man’s exquisitely composed reminiscence of his life on this earth, a journey that takes him from India to Australia. The narrative builds to a conclusion that had me weeping at the end in an uncontrollable catharsis. It highlights a lot of concepts with sensitivity: the importance of family, the considerations of adoption, one’s own identity, the wonders of the internet and love. It’s an experience I won’t soon forget.

10-25-16