Fences

Grade: B+

Maybe it’s because of my theatre background, but there is something about a movie based on a play that just reaches out and touches my soul. I’m talking about an emotionally charged, strong ensemble piece, where it doesn’t appear that much was tampered with from stage to screen. I am a fan of Glengarry Glen Ross, August: Osage County, The Big Kahuna, and Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio – the latter two being a couple of my favorites of all time. I have never seen a stage production of any of the above, but I felt like I was in a theatre (rather than a theater) seeing the actors do it live. There was no need to Hollywoodize ’em – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We arrive at Fences, based on an August Wilson play, now a major motion picture directed by Denzel Washington, who also stars as Troy Maxson, a working class father trying to raise his family in the 1950s. To say he has trials, tribulations, and demons is an understatement, and to say there is drama and tough, heavy conversations is equally a given. As mean, tortured, and torturing as the character could be, Washington presents the role with his usual class. He knows how to make us listen and even feel sympathy and empathy. As director too, he knows his way around the camera. During one of the Friday post-work scenes, where characters assemble in the back yard to stand in a circle, chat, and pass around a bottle of gin, I love the way the camera just tracks in a circle around the actors. The incomparable Viola Davis stands her ground as Washington’s long-suffering wife, and may walk away with the Oscar on February 26. Wilson’s script is rife with wisdom and a surprising amount of lessons to be learned. Many individual scenes feel like they could be their own one-act play. If it falters a little bit, it’s at the end, where I wasn’t sure what the point, or message, or “cap” to all of this was supposed to be, but there’s a beautiful moment where a mentally challenged character blows a trumpet, and at first it’s just breath, but then it grows into screeching and honking noises until it finally becomes a beautiful tone that extends out to the heavens. The score then kicks in, and the trumpet note becomes the fifth in a minor chord (G minor, if memory serves). You have to be in the right mood for material like this, but like the fifth in a chord Fences will have a significant place for you.
Grade: B+