Fences the Movie

Saw this tonight and wanted to share some thoughts. Never having seen this performed on stage, I'm at a disadvantage in terms of any comparisons. However I thought the performances were stellar but can't help feeling that it must have been much more dramatic on stage than on film. I thought some of the major plot lines were a bit overwhelmed by Denzel's performance and the supporting cast, while wonderful, never stood out under the weight of Denzel. Believe me, for me to write that to include Viola Davis, an actress I feel is the best around right now, pains me. I would like to know if that was the same on stage?

Also, the credits say the screenplay was written by August Wilson and I realize that Wilson died over 10 years ago. Since Denzel is a producer and director of this movie, was that the only way this movie was ever going to be made?

Updated On: 12/30/16 at 08:46 PM

The acting was top-notch. Fat Denzel and Viola were exceptional. The screenplay was superb. With the small cast and most scenes taking place either in the backyard, in the house, or the street in front, it felt like watching a stage play.

I was bored out of my mind. Denzel is a great actor but a bad director. I thought his direction was stiff and clumsy in The Great Debaters, and hasn't really improved since then.

Plus the play reminds me too much of A View from the Bridge and others of its ilk. There's a Family, and there's an Issue that comes up, and then lots of crying and yelling. It's not my kind of theater, and I don't go to the movies for theater, anyway. This is one of the stagiest movies I've ever seen.

Coming from Pittsburgh, where August Wilson is THE local writer of note, it's always a bit of culture shock that other states don't regard August Wilson in the same breath as JD Salinger of Harper Lee as the 20th century American writers every high schooler studies.

Between eighth grade and twelfth grade, I must have studied "Fences" at least two or three times as an English class linchpin. In college, when my theatre classes brought up "Fences," I was amazed to discover that Wilson is not as major of a cultural figure as living in Pennsylvania made him out to be.

darquegk said: "Coming from Pittsburgh, where August Wilson is THE local writer of note, it's always a bit of culture shock that other states don't regard August Wilson in the same breath as JD Salinger of Harper Lee as the 20th century American writers every high schooler studies.

Between eighth grade and twelfth grade, I must have studied "Fences" at least two or three times as an English class linchpin. In college, when my theatre classes brought up "Fences," I was amazed to discover that Wilson is not as major of a cultural figure as living in Pennsylvania made him out to be.



"

Don't despair, darquegk. August Wilson is the most successful straight-play writer on Broadway since the age of Neil Simon. He's certainly revered in Los Angeles (where almost all his plays were staged at the Mark Taper Forum) and I suspect in New Haven (where so many of his plays premiered). The area universities continue to produce his plays regularly and the Taper just did MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM.

I never taught a modern theater course without including a Wilson play--and I wasn't the only professor who did so. I promise you students where I taught knew his work well..

hork said: "I was bored out of my mind. Denzel is a great actor but a bad director. I thought his direction was stiff and clumsy in The Great Debaters, and hasn't really improved since then.

Plus the play reminds me too much of A View from the Bridge and others of its ilk. There's a Family, and there's an Issue that comes up, and then lots of crying and yelling. It's not my kind of theater, and I don't go to the movies for theater, anyway. This is one of the stagiest movies I've ever seen.



"

I haven't seen the film and the play is more often compared to DEATH OF A SALESMAN because of the shared theme of father/son relationships.

But I think you've missed the point if you think FENCES on stage is (in George C. Wolfe's phrase) another "Mama on the couch" play. Nor is it the main point that the family has a "secret", as one might say of SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER or CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF.

The point of FENCES is that Troy is caught between his understandable desire to advance himself versus his obligation to his community of African-Americans. That's why Jim Bono, Troy's subordinate, but previously his equal in the Sanitation Dept., is in the play. It's a specifically African-American conflict and needs to be seen in that context.

Again, I haven't seen the film. Perhaps the important distinction was lost in the filmmaking process.

see this on Wednesday.

A Director, you had me until "Do his plays depict THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN EXPERIENCE? No, but this does not diminish his plays...."

Do you mean "no" as in "because there is no one AA experience, just as there is no one European-American or one Native American experience"? I would agree with that and it would explain your use of caps.

But in the sense that Williams' and Miller's plays "depict the European-American experience", I would absolutely argue that Wilson's plays depict the African-American experience with greater breadth and depth than anyone else has achieved. Of course that doesn't mean he captures the full experience of every individual African-American. Nobody does. (I would further argue that he captures "the American experience" as well as Miller or Williams, and does so through an African-American point of view, because the universal is always found through details rather than through vague generalities.)

As I remember the Wilson/Brustein dust up, Wilson was irate at the suggestion that his plays in general, and FENCES most especially, fit within the Western, "aristotelian", "well-made play" theater continuum. He argued that his work was sui generis or, at least, uniquely African-American in its aspects. He even seemed to claim he had never seen or read a play by Arthur Miller.

Later, Wilson had to "walk that back" (as we say now) and issued a statement saying of course we all know dramatic literature of the Western tradition and no American playwright is entirely immune to its influences.

If he continued to disparage FENCES, I suspect it was because the play is his most cleanly structured, in the European sense. To me, there is no crime in that. As with his other plays, Wilson lets content dictate form.

Updated On: 1/2/17 at 11:48 PM

Gaveston - What I attempted to say is there is no one African-American experience. Yes, I used all caps to make this point.

I agree Miller and Williams depict the "European-American experience." On the other hand no one expects there plays to depict all parts of this experience. At times, I feel some people think an African-American playwrights must depict all parts of black lives in this country. Wilson's plays depict the American experience, with the exception of Radio Golf, of the working class/poor African-Americans.

I don't know if Wilson had read or seen Death of a Salesman when he wrote FENCES. To me, it doesn't matter. It does matter that someone like Robert Brustein used his dislike of Death... to dismiss Fences. I referred to Brustein as MASSA on purpose.

I remember when Brustein left (or was fired from) Yale. There were articles claiming this action marked the end of American theatre. Then he moved to Harvard and started the American Repertory Theatre. He track record of producing new plays by American playwrights was low. I think he picked the theatre's name because the first letter of each word out together spells ART.

To be fair, Wilson said things about theatre that made me angry and confused. As the years have gone by, I've come to understand his comments. I don't agree with them, but August Wilson is a great American playwright whose plays will be produced and taught for many years to come. I'd go so far to call him a great world playwright. I agree with African-American actors who call him their Shakespeare.

Caught the film this afternoon. The performances are indeed remarkable and while I admire the clear respect in filming Wilson's play pretty much word for word, I wished the property had been a bit more reimagined for film. The dialogue is wonderful but way more than is usual or needed for film and without the live element seemed a tad mind numbing in sections. Its a wonderful depiction of the play on film but I think is only okay as a film on its own terms. I hope if Denzel is planning on filming the rest of Wilson's work he won't be so slavishly faithful.

Richard Brody has a negative piece about the movie on The New Yorker's website, the gist of which is that "the performances resemble theatrical ones and spurn the distinctive exhilarations of movie acting." (http://http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/what-fences-misses-about-adapting-plays-for-the-screen)



I haven't seen the movie yet (although I saw and loved both Broadway productions), so I can't comment on Brody's views, as they relate specifically to the movie of "Fences". However, one general statement he makes troubles me. He says:



"The virtuosity of theatrical craft, by comparison, is reassuring in its transmissibility and manageability; it’s nearly quantifiable, which allows critics to play teacher and assign the equivalent of a numerical grade. But the greatest movie acting is too mysterious to be measured."

To the extent I understand that statement (admittedly, a very limited extent), I'm not sure I agree with it. Theatrical acting is "nearly quantifiable", as opposed to movie acting, which is "mysterious"? Your thoughts?

I think it was a mediocre adaptation of the play. Fences was incredible on the stage with James Earl Jones and Mary Alice. The ferocity of Jones performance, coupled with the warmth and humor of Alice's performance, made for an unbeatable pair.

I know he won a Tony, and will be nominated for an Oscar, but I just felt that Washington -- who I normally love in everything -- made the character too unlikeable. I know that he had obstacles in his life, and great disappointments, but he was just unlikeable. I didn't feel sorry for him, whereas Jones made Troy a truly tragic character.

As for Viola Davis, when I saw King Hedley in a pre-Broadway engagement in DC, I had never heard of her. I thought she gave a truly great performance. She had a soliloquy that is one of my most memorable moments in 50 years of attendance, right up there with Colleen Dewhurst cradling Jason Robards in A Moon For the Misbegotten. I mention this because I was not moved by her performance here. I know the is one of the great criers, but I felt that she was ACTING every minute. I know that this will be a minority view and that she will probably win an Oscar, but I can't help feeling that it will not be deserved. Mary Alice, at least at the two performances I saw, internalized her pain...Viola let the tears and the phlegm flow and it was distracting.

My biggest issue, though, was that I did not feel that I was watching a movie. For this, I lay blame at Denzel the director's feet. It would have been better if he had recorded the play...long stretches of heavy dialogue work better on the stage.

For me FENCES turns out to be a fascinating exercise in what makes a movie and what makes a stage play. What I saw at the movie theater yesterday was clearly a stage play recorded with a film camera, and a superbly performed and photographed stage play on those terms.

In fact it had more locations than most posters here acknowledge (beyond the Exterior Street, Exterior Back Yard, and 3 different floors of the Interior Maxson House, I also counted several city blocks Exteriors for the garbage truck's route, Interior and Exterior Sanitation Center, Interior City Hall lobby, Interior Rose's church, and Interior Neighborhood Bar). And all those key locations were beautifully realized by production designer David Gropman (who is in fact a Yale Drama School alum in stage design).

But the conceit of this movie seemed to be that the words would take the audience to all the other places mentioned in the script, much as the words transport the audience in a Broadway theater without the need for set changes. In fact I've rarely seen a film so carefully avoid the use of flashbacks or crosscutting to other locales that would be standard in any other film. We never see Gabe's rooming house, never see a love scene with Alberta, or visit the hospital room where she dies as her baby is born. What extraordinary discipline it must have taken by the filmmakers to reject those easy ways to lead the audience through the story and simply say to us: No, you must listen to our words alone to know what you need to know to follow the story. That's the essence of a theatrical experience as distinct from a cinematic one. As a stage play, I thought the film FENCES was terrific.

So what were my favorite moments in the film? The cinematic ones of course-- the wordless changing of the seasons from winter to summer, the final benediction of sun rays shining through the branches down on Gabe and his trumpet, and especially the simple singing of "Old Blue" by Cory and Raynell-- all the moments that had nothing to do with words.