[Film Review] Fences (2016) 6.8/10 and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020) 7.3/10

Two film adaptations of August Wilson’s plays, FENCES is Denzel Washington’s third sortie as a director, who also acts as the producer of MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM and is committed to bring Wilson’s CENTURY CIRCLE (10 plays in total, each takes place in one specific decade from 1900s t0 1990s) onto the screen, one-fifth has been done and long live Denzel!

FENCES is set in the ‘50s Pittsburgh, about the family of Troy Maxson (Washington), a middle-aged garbage collector, whom at first glance, we reckon as a hard-working, decent family man, bantering with his chummy coworker-cum-longtime-friend Jim Bono (Henderson), living with his wife Rose (Davis), football jock son Cory (Adepo) in their own house. But in time, Troy’s defects will surface through the strife between him and Cory, his paternalistic high-handedness is too overbearing even for its time, and more so, he is an unregenerate adulterer who sires a daughter with another woman, a bolt out of the blue that pulverizes Rose.

So, why should we feel sympathetic towards such a reprobate? who is grumpy, egotistic, hypocritical, macho and conceited, whose own past is rife with bad parenting, violence, theft and prison time, all attribute to his warped psyche. For one thing, Wilson’s own script (he passed away in 2005, and received sole credit for the screenplay) is teeming with dialogues that reflect the Afro-American existence that plays a significant part in molding Troy’s personality, no highfalutin wording, all down-to-earth grists, eloquently delivered by Washington firing on all cylinders, a performance irrefutably marks another apex of the star’s extraordinary career.

That is another thing which makes Troy a fascinating character, his masculine pride (the anathema that feeds bigotry) is all he has to hold onto after receiving many raw deals, and only through Washington’s reeling-off, unrelieved elocution, Troy’s ignorance, insularity and self-delusion bulk large, it is painful to watch him lay into his own son like a tyrant, yet, for an illiterate, case-hardened alpha man, who has three children all from different mothers, we should be thankful that his bark is worse than his bite.

Facing off an indomitable Washington, Davis isn’t cowed, albeit Rose is hemmed in the conventional angel-in-the-house bell jar, which she compensates with such seismic effusions that gooseflesh is sure to crawl all over one’s skin, also in those less vehement moments, one can always bank on her to give a piece of her mind that will bowl audience over.

Still, FENCES is a ponderous entity, and its 139-minute running time does it a disservice for being repetitively prolix, several sequences should be pruned, for example, Troy’s mentally impaired brother Gabriel (Williamson) is the source of Troy’s guilt, but his presence often slows down the momentum, and who can steal his thunder from Washington and Davis? Nary a chance.

By the same token, MA RAINEY… is more efficacious for its rapier-like, confrontational stagecrafts, after a short prologue, it occurs succinctly during one afternoon of a recording session in Chicago in the ‘20s, prominent singer Ma Rainey (Davis), dubbed “Mother of the Blues”, has to put her foot down in upholding her demands in face of her pale-skin manager and producer, whereas the trumpeter of her band, Levee (Boseman), is reckless and hot-headed enough to burn his bridge and fancy striking out on his own.

Sporting Ma’s oleaginous, smudgy war paint and flamboyant outfit, Davis goes for broke in the prima donna default (her singing is dubbed, right?), Ma can’t suffer gladly anyone who doesn’t bend to her biddings, neither the subservient manager Irvin (Shamos), the dour-looking producer Sturdyvant (Coyne), nor those who have the same pigmentation like hers. Being a colored woman who make good in the societal echelon, she has the clout to be nobody’s doormat, her pride festering into conceit and her pertinacious insistence of equal respect making her egocentric (giving white lickspittles a taste of their own medicine, she can also stand pat with nepotism). It is interesting that there is no love lost between Ma and Levee, under any mitigated circumstances, the pair could have hit it off and put their talents together into greater use. Yet, can’t we not relate to Ma? Anyone in her position will be none the wiser, her bluntness and high-handedness reflects how she manages to cope with a vastly unjust, racist world at large, Davis again, amps up the decibel and bulldozes any obstruction with her utterly transfixing verve and flexibility.

Shall Boseman land a posthumous Oscar nomination or even a win for his lived-in incarnation of Levee, a gifted musician for sure, but also an aspirant blowhard sans any savoir faire to break out against the antagonistic milieu? The verdict is a big “yes!”, Levee is the antithesis of Ma, she has made it but he ain’t, his tragedy lies in his impatience, his arrogance and naivety, one must pay his dues to earn his entitlement. Levee is too keyed-up, hot to trot to become someone, and puts all his hope in the hands of a treacherous white man. When his hope is roundly dashed, it is harrowing, even despairing to witness the target of his wielding knife is an innocent low hanging fruit (Glynn Turman is another memorable presence as Toledo the pianist) other than the culprit, Wilson’s lucid dissection of a colored man’s warped mentation is uncompromisingly brought home to its audience, and a visibly scraggy Boseman pours all his heart and soul to ascertain Levee has nothing else left to show, he is a miserable failure, but he fails cordially.

Both films do justice to Wilson’s urtext (the most impressive through-line is a man’s death/devil-defying/wrestling struggle, manifested in both works), and are terrific showcases for their thespians. If FENCES is rather exhausting than exhaustive, MA RAINEY…, deceptively differing from a standard biopic, is a more exuberant, trenchant and shocking treatment that is able to cram enough meat into a frills-free narrative.

referential entries: John Patrick Shanley’s DOUBT (2008, 8.9/10);Robert Zemeckis' FLIGHT (2012, 6.7/10).