Ivan Radford | On 11, Mar 2024

Director: Cord Jefferson
Cast: Jeffrey Wright, John Ortiz, Leslie Uggams, Sterling K Brown, Issa Rae, Tracee Ellis Ross
Certificate: 15

“White people think they want the truth, but they don’t. They just want to feel absolved.” Those are the words of Arthur (John Ortiz), the agent of author Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) in American Fiction. It’s an astute observation in a film full of astute observations, each one delivered with razor-sharp wit and scathing precision.

Cord Jefferson’s film, based on the novel Erasure, bursts on to the screen with a remarkably assured confidence that most seasoned filmmakers would envy, let alone someone making their feature debut. The script has a pitch-perfect tone, balancing a self-aware skewering of the arts and entertainment industry with a thoughtful character study – a poignant, pointed, prickly and persistently hilarious achievement.

Monk is a writer nobody reads – his academic, intellectual style of literature is too ponderous for anyone to publish and make a profit. When he’s asked to be on a jury for a Booker-esque award, he accepts while acknowledging that he’s a token diversity choice. Also on the panel? Sintara Golden (the brilliant Issa Rae), author of We’s Lives in Da Ghetto, a book that’s immediately lauded by the overwhelmingly white industry as an authentic, raw and Important Book.

Frustrated by the pigeonholing of Black stories to poverty and trauma narratives, Monk responds to that book’s success by writing under a pseudonym a deliberately unsubtle parody of gangsploitation literature. He crams in as much swearing, violence and poverty as possible. The publishing world, inevitably, goes crazy for it – and he and his agent find themselves being offered a deal far higher than they’ve ever had before.

What ensues is an inspired and wonderfully spiky dilemma. Should Monk unmask himself and admit to the lie? Or should he take the money – which he needs to help his mother (a tender turn by Leslie Uggams), who’s living with dementia – and benefit from being pigeonholed within his own stereotyped storytelling?

“I just think we should really be listening to Black voices,” says one of the white jurors for the awards, as they outvote and ignore the two Black voices on the panel. Those kind of gorgeously crafted howlers come every minute – Jefferson has previously written on Succession – and the cast are superb at landing every single one.

Leading the ensemble, Jeffrey Wright gives the best performance of his career to date, pivoting between confused, annoyed, confused, upset, confused, smug, confused, conflicted and confused. Perpetually struggling to let down his guard, he’s then bewildered when he can’t connect with other people, and Wright expertly unpacks that disgruntled loneliness with understated sensitivity. Monk is blunt and honest enough to criticise a lack of integrity in those around him, but can’t escape his own lack of integrity the more he perpetuates his self-eclipsing deception. “I don’t really believe in race,” he declares at one point. “The problem is that everyone does,” comes the reply.

While there’s fun to be had with Monk’s increasingly elaborate posturing, and a Hollywood producer played knowingly by Adam Brody (the brilliantly named Wiley Valdespino), the film’s strength lies in the way that it builds on the prickly laughter with genuine warmth in its slow, gentle domestic scenes. Wright’s joined by the generous Tracee Ellis Ross as Monk’s smart sister, Lisa, and the scene-stealing Sterling K Brown as his confrontational but wounded brother, Clifford, and the trio’s interactions are brilliantly sincere. They’re affectionate and tetchy in the way that families naturally are, with jokes and jibes that feel intended for one another rather than an audience watching.

The result is a surprisingly moving drama about learning to listen to the voices that matter in your life – allowing the characters to be more than the script’s satirical construct – while also not losing sight of the deft dissection of the pressures that Black artists face in an industry that panders to a white appetite for Black trauma. A bravura final act reminds us that there’s no winning as society currently stands – and leaves you eager to see whatever Cord Jefferson does next.

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