Month: March 2024

2023 Oscars Best Picture Review: American Fiction

Jon The Blogcentric1 Comment
Jeffrey Wright portrays a serious African American writer who faces pressure from a white-dominated entertainment society in the comedy American Fiction.

DISCLAIMER: This is from a blog of four reviews I originally posted on March 2, 2024. The original blog has been removed.

Not that often are the Academy Awards friendly to comedy films. American Fiction is just the type of comedy that can do the trick.

Those of you on social media must be very familiar with the #OscarsSoWhite campaign. Despite there being seven acting nominees that are racial minorities this year, we need to have things more consistent over the years. Focusing back on the film, the Oscars and their lack of consistency in making their nominees diverse is just one of the problems with Hollywood and the entertainment system as a whole in dealing with racial minorities. Hollywood is gratefully responsible for this. Those who’ve seen classic films of the past will have seen a negative or mocking depiction of a racial minority. Awareness groups in the last decade have helped to make Hollywood think twice about how racial minorities are depicted in entertainment. Even though they won’t stop an insulting depiction from happening again, they will raise hell when it does and make people think twice.

In this film, it’s very obvious the theme of the film is about African-Americans depicted in all forms of arts and entertainment. It’s not only about how they’re depicted in entertainment. It’s also about an entertainment system where top sales and ratings are the bottom line. African Americans have various personalities and life goals and directions, but it’s always about the images that sell the most. And that’s the problem Thelonious “Monk” Ellison has to deal with. His novels are of excellent quality and good for how they give a good atypical depiction of African American life. Nevertheless there’s the problem of his works not selling. That frustrates him to the point he feels he has to sell out and do a “gangsta” novel. I’m sure many others feel the same pressure.

The film is a humorous look of an African-American author trying to get respect in the literary world which all-too-often seems to favor quantity over quality. It spoofs the whole system and how the white-dominated public treats works from African-Americans from his latest manuscript being rejected for not being “black enough” to his books being sold in the African-American section of a bookstore to his adding clout to his author’s guise as a criminal on the run from the law to a jury of a book festival consisting mostly of white limousine liberals lauding his upcoming novel. It also includes the irony of the one African-American member of the jury, rival author Sintara Golden, panning his novel as pandering. Meanwhile Monk himself finds her novel pandering.

Although the story is obviously about a significant topic, the story also has a lot of personal elements for Monk. This story is also about the author’s difficulty of trying to create and market his breakthrough novel right during a load of sudden complications in his life. He’s put on a sabbatical by his college because of his frequent confrontations with students. While reuniting with his family in Boston, his sister suddenly dies. His mother’s Alzheimer’s worsens and she needs to be placed in a care facility. The maid who he grew up with has to leave her job and eventually marries. His brother is going through a divorce and drug addiction after his wife caught him with another man. In addition, he is developing a relationship with an established lawyer named Coraline but the relationship ends as he disagrees with her about Sintara’s book. Try plugging a breakthrough novel with all this happening!

Top respect should go to director/writer Cord Jefferson. This film is actually based from a 2001 novel Erasure. Jefferson does a great job in satirizing the difficulty of trying to make it as a “black writer” from the difficulty of doing his work his way to the pressure of dropping his artistic integrity and selling out by writing a pandering “gangsta” work to the “liberal elite” (full of mostly white people) taking it as serious literature worthy of acclaim to the media machine building up the hype to Monk taking his pandering further to add to the hype. It’s both funny and smart at the same time. Mixed with its humor, it’s very much an eye opener about the pressures African-Americans go through to make it in arts and entertainment. It pokes fun at the expectations of what African-American literature is expected to be from the elite of the arts who are mostly not African-American and an entertainment industry where top sales have always been the bottom line. It also pokes fun at the “liberal elite” who are mostly of white people who want diversity but are clueless in how to do it right, despite being the ones pulling the strings. Despite the themes, it also includes the human elements like Monk’s connection with his family and love interest and how it helps him understand himself better as a writer and as a person. Even that element of Monk dealing with his ‘genius’ characteristic adds to the story.

Respect should also go to Jeffrey Wright in playing Monk Ellison. It’s not an easy thing to do a comedic performance with intelligence, even though the story does just that. Wright does a great job of a ‘genius’ writer who feels compelled to throw away his dignity as he’s on a sabbatical and just sell out with a pandering novel. At the same time, Wright adds dimension with his role as Monk tries to keep family ties together and tries to start a relationship with Coraline, only for his ‘genius’ characteristics to interfere. That’s quite an effort to do and to keep comedic for the sake of the film. There are some great supporting performances. First is from Sterling K. Brown as the brother dealing with the frustrating addiction and troubling changes in his life. There’s Lessie Uggams as the mother with Alzheimer’s robbing her of her quality of life but also able to say something to help Monk get a better focus of himself. There’s also Erika Alexander as the girlfriend who knows how to draw the line with Monk’s attitude and arrogance. With the musical score of Laura Karpman added in, you have a winning film.

American Fiction is just the intelligent comedy we need right now. It makes the difficulties of African Americans trying to make it in arts mixed with the attitudes of the mostly-white elites in the business look like the circus that it is. At the same time, it makes it as much about the author as a friend and a member of the family and his difficulty with his personality interfering with that. Already I declare this the Comedy Of The Year.

2023 Oscars Best Picture Review: Anatomy Of A Fall (Anatomie d’Une Chute)

Jon The Blogcentric2 Comments
Sandra Huller plays writer Sandra Voyter suspected of killing her husband in the courtroom thriller Anatomy Of A Fall.

DISCLAIMER: This is from a blog of four reviews I originally posted on March 2, 2024. The original blog has been removed.

Anatomy Of A Fall first appears to be a common courtroom drama with a story of intrigue. Over time, you’ll learn it’s a film that’s a lot more.

Courtroom dramas have caught our intrigue time and time again. We’re presented with a criminal scenario or a legal scenario, but it’s up for us to decide whether they’re guilty or innocent or who to side with in a dispute. We learn the verdict and we’re left to decide if it’s the right verdict or not. This story is a unique story. It presents a case of a death from a fall. The deceased is the French husband of a German novelist. The fall happens from a chateau in a remote mountainous area of Grenoble. The first to notice the fall is the seeing-eye dog of the blind son. Questions arise. We learn of the troubled marriage. People turn against the woman. The prosecutor is determined to prove her guilty. The son watches despite his blindness, and seems like he doesn’t know what to think. Could he hold the truth? Could his seeing-eye dog also provide clues to the truth?

This isn’t simply a story of whether Samuel’s death is a murder, a suicide or an accident. It’s a story that develops over time with each new fact exposed, opinions from people in the story coming about, and your own opinions being formed. As we learn of Sandra Voyter, her turbulent marriage, and her recent liaisons, some of us are tempted to look down upon her and even suspect her of possible murder. As we learn about Samuel and his immaturities and later of his depression over the last few years, will that change our mind? The film is as much about how we see things and see people as it is about our story itself. Even possibly exposing sexist attitudes we didn’t think we had. There’s even the angle of the trial as seen through Daniel: the child caught in the middle. A blind boy, he has the biggest sense of the friction his parents have been going through. He lost his father and he’s at risk of losing his mother if she’s found guilty. During the time, he doesn’t know what to think of his mother and often feels lonely. Almost as if Snoop, his seeing-eye dog, is the only one who loves him and he can trust. Sometimes your concern shifts from how Sandra will be found by the courts to what will happen to Daniel. It’s like the film is two stories in one. Even Daniel’s testimony at the end will make you reconsider your stance in the case.

Top respect goes to director/writer Justine Triet. Triet has become only the eighth female director to be nominated for the Best Director Oscar. This film is actually a project she co-wrote with Arthur Haran for actress Sandra Huller to star in after the two worked together in 2019’s Sibyl. She creates a great story that presents a death and the question if it’s an accident or a murder. She presents it as a story of a French-speaking wife and a German-speaking husband who use English as a common ground to sort things out, but it adds friction. The death, the courtroom drama, the turbulent marriage, the communication barrier, and the son caught in the middle adds to the story. Even the ending which allows you to draw your own conclusion of the incident adds to the film.

Along with Triet, there was great acting from Sandra Huller. Her acting in this story helps create the character along with the actions and allows the audience to make their decisions in the case. Huller is as much of a storyteller as Triet herself. Also great is the performance of Milo Machado-Graner: the son caught in the middle. There are many times in the story, some thanks to camera shots of the courtroom drama, where one can think the film is as much about Daniel as it is about Sandra. He’s trying to make sense of what is happening. He is suspicious of his mother but is scared he will lose it all. There are times he tries to be tough with him teaching himself piano by sound clips, but you can tell he could break down. It seems like the dog Snoop is his one friend, especially with his sheltered upbringing. Graner makes him a boy you want to hug. Adding to the film is Messi The Dog as Snoop. Through Messi, we see Snoop is more than Daniel’s seeing-eye dog and best friend. He’s also one that hold clues to what could expose the truth. Additional great acting performances include Samuel Theis as Samuel Maleski, the husband that struggled with mental illness whose struggles threatened the family, and Antoine Reinartz as the prosecutor who will get you wondering if he wants justice done or simply to have Sandra found guilty.

This film has been lauded with buzz since the Cannes Film Festival. The film won the Palme d’Or at the and Triet became only the third female director in history to win. You know how I talked about Messi The Dog adding to the story? At Cannes, Messi was even given the Golden Dog Award for his efforts! Even after Cannes, film festival after film festival it was entered in would have this come away as the big winner. The film also won six European Film Awards. The film was not France’s official submission in the Best International Feature Film category. I assumed it’s because there’s too much English in the film, but other articles are suggesting there may be politicking.

Anatomy Of A Fall is a great legal drama that tells the story of a death in question and doesn’t only leave its fate to the juries, but for the audience to decide for themselves what they believe to be the truth. Even Triet herself won’t say if Sandra is guilty or not. All your call!