Sintara Golden (Issa Rae) understands this and thus makes the decision to research those less fortunate than her in order to tell their story. But when Monk confronts his nemesis at a panel where they are the only two Black people debating the year’s best fiction, he is surprised that Golden reveals herself to be a sensitive and intelligent reader of both the African American canon and the literary marketplace, as evidenced by the book she’s reading in the scene. In a lesser film, the confrontation between Monk and Golden might have generated histrionic clichés about racial authenticity and artistic intention. Instead American Fiction leaves both Monk and his audience to ponder the merits of Golden’s approach to her craft.
As Monk, Jeffrey Wright offers perhaps the most fully rounded performance of his storied career. Monk’s frustration with the overwhelmingly white world of NYC publishing is palpable during the three-sided exchanges between him and Arthur and the publishing doyenne Paula Bateman (Miriam Shor). Monk plays up his alter ego by swearing at Bateman and making a series of ridiculous demands. Tellingly, Stagg R. Leigh’s aggression toward Bateman evokes from her both a thrilled enthusiasm and nervous diffidence that was notably absent when her imprint rejected Monk’s more esoteric novels. While Monk revels in his telephonic exchanges with Bateman, his public performances as Stagg R. Leigh are marked by a paranoiac caution, as if his body rejects the contortions he’s demanding of it. When Monk meets the culture vulture and self-styled auteur Wiley (Adam Brody), he transmits his weariness through darting eyes, hunched shoulders, and a knowing diffidence, until the moment when Monk unceremoniously abandons Wiley at a pricey restaurant, fleeing out of fear that Wiley will see through him. To Monk’s surprise, his defensive performance as Stagg R. Leigh convinces Wiley to offer a seven-figure sum for the film rights to My Pafology. It is fitting that Wright—who like the character he plays had failed to receive the recognition his talents deserve—earned his first Golden Globe nomination this week and seems likely to earn his first Academy Award nomination for this role.
While Wright is a known quantity, Cord Jefferson shows himself to be an emerging filmmaker of prodigious talents. Jefferson first demonstrated his abilities to reinterpret celebrated books with his Emmy award–winning work on HBO’s Watchmen, and it is to his immense credit that he keeps the vertiginous and surrealist elements of American Fiction so firmly under his control. The tensions between the difficult and pampered Agnes and her estranged adult children could easily curdle into caricature, but Jefferson enables his cast to invest these relationships with a familial warmth and a mocking affection that feels all too real. When the film introduces Cliff, he mocks his older brother with a famous quote from The Color Purple, but later when the two speak frankly about their deceased father’s infidelities and how his lack of care fractured their family, Cliff forgives Monk’s myopia with a sardonic tenderness rarely granted Black men in film. Similarly, Monk’s vexed relationship to race could easily become self-loathing in the hands of a less assured director. But Jefferson expertly contrasts Monk’s middle-aged neurosis—at one point he carefully buttons his shirt and knots his tie after having sex—with the obvious pleasure he derives from getting one over on the publishing industry. It is a credit to actor and director that Monk comes across as an extremely difficult person but one who remains somehow both plausible and likable.