Movie Review: Denzel Washington nobly honors the legacy of August Wilson in “Fences”.
Denzel Washington could conceivably compartmentalize his towering screen presence into tiny little fragments, spread them amongst his male contemporaries and he would probably still be able to make the case for being one of the most charismatic actors of our era. Mr. Washington’s gifts are of the once-in-a-generation variety, which is why even lackluster movies (and he’s done more than a few) suddenly become watchable with his engaged presence at their center. Few, if any other performers his age can command the screen with the same kind of authority.
Of course, Washington’s leading man swagger has been misused and squandered in forgettable work like “2 Guns” and Robert Zemeckis’ dire “Flight,” though I’m of the unpopular opinion that some of the actor’s collaborations with Tony Scott (particularly “Crimson Tide,” “Man on Fire” and “Unstoppable”) are actually undiscovered sort-of masterpieces of action cinema. That Washington can embody the perennial mold of a charismatic leading man is no secret; hell, he did it just this summer in the “Magnificent Seven” remake. What I’m saying is that when Washington puts his obligations as a movie star aside and shows up purely to act, something magical happens. Occasionally, you get a hybrid of the two, as in Antoine Fuqua’s “Training Day,” for which Washington deservedly won an Academy Award. What can’t be disputed is that the man possesses a kind of inherent, rugged magnetism that, at times, almost borders on superhuman.
For his third effort behind the camera, following “Antwone Fisher” and “The Great Debaters,” Washington has set out to achieve the intimidating task of adapting August Wilson’s “Fences” for the big screen, in addition to casting himself as the lead. Wilson’s legendary stage work is a gorgeous model of character-building and damning reversals, all of which is buoyed by working man’s dialogue that sings like music. The action is mostly centered around Troy Maxon: an angrier Willy Loman; a garrulous garbageman whose bygone dreams of playing pro baseball have since sunk down the drain like so much cheap gin. The playwright’s undeniable and well-touted gift is for transforming the rough-hewn vernacular of the black American working class into something akin to poetry. This is just as well, since Washington’s protagonist fancies himself a master in the art of conversation. Aside from drinking, you could almost say it’s his chief hobby.
The philosophy of “Fences” the film seems to be that when the written material is this brilliant, a director’s priority should be to honor the language, and Mr. Washington has certainly done that. “Fences” is a grave, handsome and often riveting work that’s unquestionably reverent to the source material. In fact, the film might be too reverent for its own good. Though the measured, deliberate pace of “Fences” may act as a palate cleanser to some after the dizzying postmodern theatrics of “La La Land” and “Jackie,” there are also times when the movie’s knowingly static pace can wear on the nerves. Perhaps this is Washington’s goal. For “Fences” is largely a film about stagnation: a film about the gradual stagnation (and eventual corrosion) of a marriage, the stagnation of a man in middle age, the stagnation of certain corners of America during a time of social upheaval. The film can feel like an endurance test at times, and I would guess that that’s partially by design.
Though it would be hard to argue that “Fences” is packed with multifaceted parallels to today’s troubled headlines, Washington wisely avoids grandstanding and moralizing, instead opting to keep his focus mostly on the nuclear Maxon family and their immediate kin. The vast majority of the film plays out in their ramshackle Philadelphia home, in which long-buried secrets have taken root and now fester like a cancer. As I mentioned earlier, “Fences” isn’t always an easy sit and while I admired Washington’s decision to focus mainly on Wilson’s dialogue and leave the directorial gimmickry to young thundercats like Damien Chazelle and Pablo Larraín, there is also a part of me that wishes that “Fences” had done a little more to embrace the fundamentally cinematic nature of its story.
That said, this is probably Washington’s best movie as a director, and to be honest, it’s far from the safe, anemic piece of Awards bait that the trailers have sold it as. “Fences” is a story that is centered around recriminations and realizations: a hard-hitting work of capital-D drama that watches pitilessly as its characters lay into each other. Occasionally they use fists, but more often than not, they use words, looks and articulated recollections.
Since Washington is an actor himself, and one of our best, he’s smart not to let his directorial showmanship get in the way of the performances. He’s an actor’s director, and the performances that he summons from co-stars Viola Davis, Stephen McKinley Henderson and Jovan Adepo are nothing short of astonishing. In its most scalding moments, “Fences” feels like the kind of emotionally lacerating dramatic work that grabs you by your lapels and shakes you to the point where you forget that you’re immersed in a piece of fiction. I did occasionally find myself wishing that Washington would divorce himself, to some degree, from the fidelity he clearly has to Wilson’s original, Pulitzer-winning work. And yet when the source material is a piece of undisputed genius, who am I to suggest that tampering with it might have improved the final product?
The movie opens with Troy and his amiable, portly best friend Jim Bono walking home from work. The time and place is mid-century America: specifically the hardscrabble, ethnically mixed Hill District of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Troy works thankless hours as a garbage man, always stumbling home with Bono carrying a flask of booze at the ready. Of course, anyone who’s seen Wilson’s play knows that Troy doesn’t shut the hell up for any extended period of time. He’s a loudmouth, a braggart, a stoopside poet whose boisterous ramblings are both invigorating and infuriating to those around him. Most of the people in Troy’s life have heard all his stories before, but Troy imbues every profane rant with the vim and vigor of a local politician. His wife Rose (Viola Davis, radiating grace and humanity) looks at him with love, certainly, but also with a kind of thinly veiled desire: not sexual desire, mind you, but desire of a different kind. Simply put, Rose just wants her husband to put down the bottle, shut his mouth for a second and start living in the real world.
There are a few other characters that orbit Troy’s crumbling old brownstone domicile. Lyons Maxon is the man’s oldest son. He’s a freeloading musician whose smooth countenance is a bad disguise for the fact that he only swings by the house when he needs to borrow some money. Then there’s Gabriel, Troy’s mentally scarred brother who is living with the effects of having a metal plate installed in his skull after returning home from war (scholars of Wilson’s work will remember that “Fences” contains one of his most crippling reveals, when we learn that Gabriel’s government stipend is the only reason Troy was able to purchase his house in the first place). Gabriel is fundamentally sweet but also tortured, frequently ranting about devils and demonic canines chasing him throughout the live-long day.
And then, of course, there is the youngest Maxon, Cory. Like his father as a young man, Cory is an athlete par excellence. Unlike his father, Cory doesn’t have a drinking problem, and has actually managed to turn his talents into something that might potentially lead to a career. This, as you can imagine, causes the older Troy a great deal of ire. He’s disdainful and resentful of the boy, clearly harboring some unresolved jealousy over his own lost stab at greatness, which he never fails to mention during his many long-winded and often vicious ramblings.
Troy’s scenes with Cory are the most interesting, though Viola Davis’ Rose truly comes into her own in the movie’s emotionally stormy third act. Davis is one of our finest actresses, and yet she’s found herself stuck in movies both good (Michael Mann’s “Blackhat”) and pretty god-awful (David Ayer’s “Suicide Squad”) this year. These are films that don’t understand or fully make time for the actress’s virtuosic range of talents. “Fences” is, hopefully, the film that will break that cycle and earn Mrs. Davis her first golden statue. Though Mr. Washington’s galvanic, occasionally broad performance undeniably takes center stage, it is Mrs. Davis who earns our respect and ultimately, our hearts, in the movie’s shattering climax. When she finally explodes at her husband for all the years of mental abuse he’s left her with — and believe me, it’s a genuinely harrowing moment — Davis is speaking for every under-appreciated, over-worked woman who has had to take a backseat to her man’s ill-conceived dreams. She’s breathtaking to watch, even if it’s often quite painful to see this fundamentally decent person come so completely undone as a result of her husband’s thoughtlessness.
Washington’s film is so completely gripping as a dramatic exercise that you almost don’t notice that it isn’t very cinematic — at least not in the sense that viewers of my generation have come to understand the term. Watching “Fences,” it’s hard not to admire the economy of its direction, the quiet, smoldering intensity of the actor’s performances and the stately elegance of its overall execution. However, there are other times during its lengthy two and a half hour runtime where the old adage comes to mind: “if you’re going to just shoot the script… then what’s the point?”
Essentially, just shooting the script is exactly what Mr. Washington has done. This is not quite a bad thing, especially not when the work itself is as powerful as Wilson’s original stage work. And when Mr. Washington does move the camera, you notice — unlike “La La Land,” in which the camera adopts a roving, Scorsesean energy, like an overzealous dog in a room filled with guests. In many ways, “Fences” is the anti-“La La Land”: it’s a film that’s more concerned with silences then spectacle, which opts for classical craftsmanship as opposed to reconfiguring classical structures into bracing and bizarre new forms. It’s not better than “La La Land” as a piece of pure cinema, but in a way, I’m weirdly grateful that Washington even got the movie off the ground and did it, seemingly, exactly the way he wanted to.
“Fences” is a kind of movie they don’t make much of anymore: a proudly old-school, character-intensive drama with no whiz-kid film school theatrics, no bad behavior simply for the sake of it and a stirring coda that nimbly waltzes the line between pathos and schmaltz, though it unfortunately tips the scale in favor of the latter in the movie’s unfortunate final moments. In other words, Washington’s “Fences” is more akin to something like Norman Jewison’s understated “A Soldier’s Story” (in which Mr. Washington has a small but memorable role) than any of the fevered New Hollywood epics from the 1970’s that are so frequently regurgitated by today’s younger filmmakers. This sometimes-stolid quality may put off viewers who are looking for something with more zip, more pop — something they don’t have to be so damn patient with. And yet “Fences,” in spite of its many problems, is an affecting look at one family’s struggle against the backdrop of a changing nation. Washington may be a movie star first and foremost, but with “Fences,” he’s officially proved his sterling aptitude as a man behind the camera. Grade: B.
