Jeffrey Wright in American Fiction [Clair Folger / Orion Releasing LLC]

AMERICAN FICTION
Directed by Cord Jefferson
Certificate: 12a
☆☆☆☆

THERE’S an old political theory dating from the Greek philosophers that a nation state is like a collective body. If an individual does something wrong and does not pay for the crime, their conscience is damaged. No matter what excuses can be made, the impact of the crime stays with the perpetrator. They know they have done wrong, and they know they have not paid recompense. The same goes for a nation: if it has committed a collective crime and not faced up to it, there is a sickness residing within.

American Fiction is an intelligent and therefore at times complicated film, asking the viewer to look at their own prejudices and indoctrinations.

It tells the story of college professor Theolnius ‘Monk’ Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) who finds teaching American literature a spikey process. From the works of WEB Du Bois to William Baldwin, the course considers race and literature, but he wants his own books not to be looked through the prism of the colour of his skin.

This kickstarts a brilliant family drama mixed with social and class questions, all done with a dollop of humour and feeling.

Monk – and it is telling that he is given the nickname of a jazz musician – has been told by his agent that the reason his books do not sell is they aren’t “black” enough. Audiences – particularly white audiences – want to feel absolved by reading cliched stories of the Black American experience. That’s what sells.

Frustrated by the success of a book by writer of the moment Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), whose work he says pampers to stereotypes, he decides to write a spoof packed with gangsters, rappers and ghettoes.

Called My Pafology, it’s an instant bestseller, sending Monk off into a complicated question of personal morals about a work he never meant to be taken seriously and epitomises what he loathes. Yet his domestic situation is such that he cannot turn down the lucrative royalties waved at him.

American Fiction is wonderfully acted – Wright and supporting cast are superb. The clever posing of questions about race and society will leave you moved and disturbed. But, above all, the background story of his relationship with his siblings and mother brings alive a moving family drama and shows that no matter your skin colour, our humanity creates universal shared experiences. That the nations who were built on colonialism and slavery have yet to accept it fully and make good creates a moral ineptitude we suffer from today, a point this film skewers perfectly.