Movie Review: 'American Fiction' is THE Comedy of 2023

American Fiction (2023)

Directed by Cord Jefferson

Written by Cord Jefferson

Starring Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown

Release Date December 15th, 2023

Published December 23rd, 2023

American Fiction is the sharpest American comedy of 2023. This brilliant deconstruction of writers, writing, society, and popular culture from writer and director Cord Jefferson fearlessly points an accusing finger at the audience while not letting its main character off the hook either. Featuring one of our finest actors, Jeffrey Wright, at his absolute best, American Fiction takes elements from classic literature and mixes them with a touch of the angsty self-analogizing of the formerly great Woody Allen, and crafts a near perfect comedy.

Monk, played by Jeffrey Wright, is a dyspeptic college professor and long struggling author. Despite having published several books, he cannot escape the specter of being a 'black author' and he's desperately frustrated. After suffering a loss in his family and the decline of his mother's health, Monk gets drunk and writes the kind of novel that he despises. It's a novel filled with stock characters from popular culture centered on the supposed 'black' experience.

It's written in broken English and Monk's fictional author, Stagg R. Lee, is a supposed fugitive from the law. He hopes to use the book to shame those that claim this kind of book is 'important' and 'raw' and explores the 'black' experience. It centers on a gang member with a deadbeat dad and no mother. The book is cobbled together from every 'important' piece of black popular culture aimed at white liberal guilt of the late 20th and 21st century. And in what should come as no surprise, it becomes a massive hit when Monk's agent sends it out to white publishers.

Faced with the conundrum of having written a book he despises and being offered big money to publish the book he despises; Monk begrudgingly takes the money. With his mother being in declining health and needing around the clock care and his brother, Cliff (Sterling K. Brown), being of little help as he drugs and sexes his way through a nasty divorce, Monk needs the money, even if it is coming at the cost of his self-respect. Where this story is headed, you will need to see for yourself. I can only tell you that it is an exceptionally smart and funny journey to get there.

Writer-Director Cord Jefferson has written one incredibly nimble and lithe comic script. It bubbles with wit and a contempt for a culture that reduces people to stereotypes. At the same time, the keystone of the movie is revealed in a terrifically awkward and deeply uncomfortable opening scene. Here, Monk in his job as a professor is teaching about the work of Flannery O'Connor, famed chronicler of the American south. When he writes the title of one of O'Connor's short stories on the board, the title of which I can't comfortably write in this review, a student, a young white woman objects. The title contains the N-word and while the young white woman expresses her discomfort at having to see the word, Monk becomes frustrated and berates her.

The irony is thick but the movie plays fair here. The young woman is out of her depth but as a professor, perhaps Monk could have handled the moment better than merely berating the girl. Lost in all of this emotional turmoil, however, is the story by Flannery O'Connor which may actually provide a keystone for the rest of the story unfolding. It's a story that takes an elderly man and a young boy in the south in the early 20th century, in Atlanta, on a journey that will expose the older man as a fool who asserts his superiority over others only to learn that he's not so superior after all.

That's not to say that Monk is always wrong throughout American Fiction. Rather, that he has a lot to learn and so do we in the audience who lap up misery porn as entertainment on a regular basis. We do it so much that there is an industry of people eager to capitalize on it and Cord Jefferson has a precise comic critique to lay at the feet of that industry. American Fiction has a lesson for Monk to learn but also a lesson for us to be more thoughtful in what we consume and what we desire from our popular culture. The notion that 'authenticity' comes from suffering for instance is a fallacy that has festered in popular culture for years. We lap up sadness and despair for breakfast and treat it like entertainment, while treating the act of consuming such sadness and despair as actually doing something about real sadness and despair.

In Flannery O'Connor's short story "The Artificial N#####" the main characters are a boy and his grandfather. The grandfather is taking the boy to the big city, Atlanta, so that the old man can frighten the boy out of his positive notions regarding the big city. The old man foolishly pushes his angry, fearful and superior perception of the world, onto his grandson who doesn't see the world the same way. They end up getting lost in a largely black part of Atlanta and the grandfather's arrogance and superiority only furthers their problems.

No one dies, it's not that kind of story. Rather, the old man is humiliated and must live with that humiliation, dying what essayist Nasrullah Mambrol calls "the symbolic death of an “old Adam,” the foolish one who asserts personal superiority over others, whether black or white, young or old." Monk too, will suffer this symbolic death, forced to admit that the kind of art he looks down upon, openly despises, now provides for him a life. One he may end up living alone as he allows his festering superiority to drive others away.

There's a lovely scene where Monk's brother, played brilliantly by Sterling K. Brown, tells Monk that people just want to love him, and that he should let them. He says this as he is high on cocaine and carrying on with a pair of much younger men at the wedding party of the family maid. The circumstances make this moment both beautiful and comic. The richness of Cord Jefferson's writing has Sterling K. Brown living an entire movie of his own in the background of this one but never getting in the way of the movie we are watching.

American Fiction carries several of the biggest laughs in any movie in 2023. Early on, as Monk is asserting his belief that he doesn't believe in being 'black,' he's attempting to hail a cab which blows right past him and picks up a white guy. Later, as he is judging a literary contest, and his terrible book, simply titled 'Fuck,' in yet another exquisite joke, is being considered for the top prize, he and a fellow writer, played by Issa Rae are objecting. They both believe the book is pandering nonsense, Monk because he wrote that way and Rae's Sintara Golden because she has read it. They are overruled by three white judges, one of whom states, 'it's time we really listen to black voices.'

There are several more of those moments in American Fiction, including the single funniest Roe V Wade joke ever told, delivered by the wonderful Tracee Ross Ellis. You must see American Fiction if only to hear Ellis tell that joke. That, among many other very funny and insightful bits of humor that brim throughout this brilliant film. Welcome to the big screen Cord Jefferson. In his first feature film, following a stellar career in television, he's made one of the best comedies of not just this year but of this decade. I truly cannot recommend it more.

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