Fences, directed by Denzel Washington and starring Washington and Viola Davis, is based on a play by August Wilson. Washington and Davis reprise these roles from portraying them on Broadway in 114 live performances, which is easy to notice when watching this film adaptation. These roles and this dialogue are lived-in, above all else. It’s also very easy to notice that this is first and foremost a play; the few “sets” here are about the size of a stage, and you can tell as they move around and deliver extended monologues that this was written and staged for a different medium than film. For some, this is a knock against the film. Since Broadway is all but out-of-reach for me, I relish the opportunity to see two such magnificent actors in such a well-crafted work like this. More than that, with actors like these who are so expressive with their faces, this script deserves a camera that can come in close when necessary, rather than an audience being at various distances from which to discern the subtleties of their work.
Fences is a Christmas Day opening, and while it may not be the right movie to take your extended family to see for Holiday cheer, it is a must-see. Washington’s work in front of the camera, along with the script and the surrounding performances, must have made his work behind the camera pretty easy. His directing is subtle and non-invasive. You get the impression that Washington’s job as director is to get out of the way of Washington as actor, and he does this masterfully. The stand-out performance, however, belongs to Viola Davis, whose deeply emotional and grounded performance anchor the film in the moments where the dialogue sounds less like a real conversation and more like a playwright in full poetic form. When the dialogue seems over-polished, her voice and face and movement inject each moment with the qualities of reality: real pain, lived-experience, and relational stakes.
Racial inequality is more than a theme in Fences: it’s a setting, a mood that hangs over the whole film and is present in every frame and every sentence. Though I try to be educated and empathetic on racial injustice past and present, I am rather unqualified as someone who has never been, nor will ever be, on the receiving end of racial injustice.
I did happen to be at a screening, however, where the audience was more than 50% African-American, and my observation was that this film was connecting with people on a deep and powerful level. More than once, something on screen elicited audible reactions of emotional catharsis: clapping, cheering, gasping, weeping. By contrast, I saw Rogue One on opening night amidst a crowd of Star Wars super-fans, who are known to cheer and audibly participate with these films. Yet surprisingly, this screening of Fences was more interactive and evocative than my experience with the Star Wars premiere. Not to mention that Fences was the first time I had experienced an audience interact this way with a dramatic, non-franchise film.
While I cannot relate on a personal level to the racial realities of the film, I deeply connected with its wrestling with the complexities of masculinity. The central relationship between Washington and Davis’ characters was wrought with a disproportionate sense of control, autonomy, respect, and power. Washington towered over the family instilling fear and domination. His word was final, and his presence was foreboding. Even in the moments when you begin to feel sorry for him and want to forgive his shortcomings, the story confronts you with the selfishness of his existential crisis. In the climactic dialogue you realize that his self-loathing and existential cries for help are only possible because of the quiet and endured suffering of everyone around him.
When he pursues freedom and joy in a hard world, he does so at the expense of everyone around him – a distinctly and historically male privilege. As a man, I am often afforded extra opportunities and a free pass to be a jerk sometimes, to be angry and to posture in ways for which women are rebuffed and more often dismissed. Washington’s character takes this to extremes, and however much the cycle of poverty and oppression keep him “stuck in the same place,” he rejects the shared experience of all the people around him, especially those whom he claims to love. In doing so, he not only ignores the socio-economic and relational plights of his wife and children, but he might even be causing some of it, or at least ensuring it doesn’t get any better.
Fences is a rare combination of evocative and emotionally resonant material, delivered by two of our best living actors, playing a time when we need its messages as much as ever. I hope for more movies that cause us to respond to deep expressions of the pain of human experience, at the very least as often as we get movies that cause us to cheer for action thrills and/or nostalgia. Performance art, on a stage or captured on film, is one of the most meaningful ways of observing human experience. We need more authentic expressions of real humanity, and Fences is one of a handful of great films to do that in 2016.
