Fences

I mentioned that part of the reason I even reviewed Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is so I could have an excuse to subsequently go medieval on this film.

I’ve often mentioned a friend named Christian and last year I was discussing how there have been four films in all the years I’ve been watching the Oscars (since 1993) that received a bunch of major nominations but which I utterly despised.

I previously described Crash this way:

“I get less-than-fantastic service from a black waiter who’s having a busy day and I call him the n-word; then I go to my car across the street and see an Asian with a flat tire so I help him change it and I give him the number of a shop where he can get a good deal by giving my name. Come up with such a pair of unrelated, contrived, over-the-top-dramatic occurrences involving different races for a dozen or so different people, use a random number generator to determine what order they fall in, and tell them one after another without any sort of flow or structure to the story. Also, add a car crash, thinking that somehow ties everything together.”

I’ve repeatedly expressed my anger at Gosford Park, and here is the User Comment I left for it on IMDB long ago:

“PEDIGREE” DOES NOT EQUAL QUALITY!

18 July 2002

First off let me say that I have to take issue with IMDB’s putting “A great review of an excellent film” as the main user comment; just taking one look at the user comments shows how much that does NOT represent the opinion of most of us who care to post. I will say that looking at the comments was very gratifying, I couldn’t believe the user rating was 7.6/10 but gladly most of us will talk about this film for what it really is.

I have never been so outraged when watching the Academy Awards as this year, as two of the very best films from an extraordinary year, Memento and The Royal Tenenbaums, lost out to this worthless self-indulgent piece of garbage! The Academy is so f**king full of itself I’m not sure I’ll ever even watch the Oscars anymore. This movie is NOT polished and NOT witty at ALL! I would honestly like to sit down with some of these critics who rave about the movie and have them tell me exactly what they found so funny. This movie is NOT a comedy by any stretch of the imagination. Memento literally had more laughs than this movie-3 solid ones (when Leonard says “I’m chasing this guy…no wait, he’s chasing me”, when he kicks the guy in room 9 instead of 6, and when he finds out he’s being charged for 2 hotel rooms). I watched this movie with a theater full of people and a few people only even CHUCKLED when one of the characters said “fart”. Oh yeah, that’s really witty, why didn’t Look Who’s Talking Too sweep the Oscars?

I’ve never seen such a case where critics seemed to love a movie because doing so made them “refined”. “Oh a Robert Altman ensemble period piece, let me make out my best film of the year review right now, I can fill in the character names after I watch it!” How were we supposed to care at all about the class conflict when there was hardly anyone in either class who wasn’t despicable and/or boring? I couldn’t even keep track of any of the character’s names or attributes, there were just so many of them Academy Award Winner Julian Fellowes was bombarding us with he seemed to have forgotten to make any of them memorable. Emily Watson’s was the only one that even bordered on it. 0x1,000,000 still equals 0. Compare this to The Royal Tenenbaums, that had a much smaller ensemble of characters but they were all infinitely more compelling. The plot, meanwhile, was worthless. It takes well over an hour for the murder to even take place, and then everything was so predictable, even the final “twist”. I’ve heard this movie compared to Agatha Christie by so many sources; well I loved And Then There Were None and Witness to the Prosecution and IMHO to mention this in the same breath as Christie IS A TRAVESTY!

Given that the movie has no value as a comedy, a character study, or a murder mystery, what is it? I guess it was a chance for Robert Altman to have his trademark “brilliant” overlapping dialogue with many British characters in a “thoughtful” (read: SLOW) movie and show what an “artist” he truly is. Apparently in his case that’s enough for a barrage of Top 10 lists and year end awards, as well as for Roger Ebert to be throwing a temper tantrum saying “This guy is 74 years old and he’s never won an Academy Award!” Please, do yourself a favor and skip Gosford Park, because this emperor has no clothes.

Another one of the movies was Atonement. Here is how I have summarized it:

A girl says her older sister’s fiancé raped a child, even though he didn’t and she didn’t really think he did anyway. Then she continues to not tell the truth all the years both people in the couple continue to suffer, but punishes herself by making herself clean bedpans instead. Huh? The people wronged don’t get compellingly angry or take sufficient matters to try and fix the problem, because they realize they’re in a “tragic” Oscar contender where they face hardship with “dignity”. Eventually we see the lovers were later reunited, but they weren’t really because that was just in a book the little girl wrote as an old lady. That’s basically what they tell you not to do even in elementary school – saying it was all a dream. On top of that we’re supposed to feel sorry for the girl because she feels guilty. And the movie ends with her breaking the fourth wall, because that’s “artistic”. Speaking of art, there are various shots specifically made to look like paintings because…reasons?

That leaves Fences.

It’s easier to get over my anger at Atonement than the others since it didn’t win any major Oscars. Crash infamously won Best Picture, while I’ve vented repeatedly about Gosford Park’s Screenplay Oscar. I made clear in the Ma Rainey video my fury at Viola Davis’s Best “Supporting” Actress win. Yet even if you leave all the award-winning aside, Fences is the movie I hate most out of all four…and you’ve seen that’s quite a hurdle to overcome!

A few years ago there was a thing going around Facebook where if someone assigned you an actor you were supposed to name the movie of that person’s you loved, movie you tried hard to like, movie where the person’s underrated, etc. When getting assigned Denzel Washington, for movie I hated I wrote “Fences. Fences. Did I mention Fences?” I didn’t want to be crude but I almost wanted to add that if you take out the “n” that’s what I think the movie is.

Now the venting officially begins:

This dipshit main character does what he wants, when he wants, with no regard for anyone around him. He bought a house with money his mentally challenged brother got for being injured in combat, sent the brother to live off on his own (later placing him a mental hospital) while keeping himself and his own immediate family in the house, and then rules the house like a tyrant, saying it’s his.

He is bitter about not getting to play baseball professionally when he was younger due to the color barrier but as a result has decided his son isn’t to play. Said son and Troy’s wife (the son’s mother) point how times have changed and Cory won’t face the level of discrimination Troy faced. Troy is adamant that Cory should learn a trade that nobody can take away from him, and I was getting frustrated that nobody would scream at the buffoon about how a black person would face racism regardless of profession and Cory could enjoy a much better life as a professional athlete than a random blue collar worker. Apparently that’s not allowed in “his” house where he must be addressed as “sir”.

Cory finally does try standing up to Troy after Troy deliberately kills Cory’s chance to play college football, but because Cory can’t bring himself to physically assault his dad Troy physically assaults his son instead. Then he does some dancing around with his bat, asking Death to come get him. Is it supposed to be inspiring that Troy will face death bravely after everyone else has abandoned him, even though HE’s the one who burned all the bridges by being an irredeemable asshole?

It frustrates me that Rose never stands up for Cory, and in fact she never even brings it up when Troy ruins her son’s life. That’s even though Cory does once try sticking up for her when it seems like Troy will hit her. Rose’s strongest moment by far is still infuriatingly unsatisfying – it comes when she finds out that Troy has been cheating on her and fathered an illegitimate child. Since the mistress died in childbirth, Troy becomes the all-time king of audacity by asking Rose to raise the infant girl. AND SHE AGREES! If Rose had, for once, shown some backbone and told Troy he needed to raise the girl by himself, we could have seen some great growth from Troy as being a single dad to a baby forced him to tap into love he was previously uncomfortable sharing following his abusive upbringing.

But NOOOOOOO, Rose, with snot pouring down her face while whining about how Troy’s inconsiderateness, still says yes to the most obnoxious, appalling request in history. Troy doesn’t even ask if the child can live with them; he explicitly asks if Rose will raise her.

In a PATHETIC attempt at a comeuppance, Rose says even though the baby has a mother, Troy doesn’t have a woman. What the hell does that mean? They’re still going to live together. Does it mean she won’t put out for him? Knowing Troy he’ll probably just rape her if he’s feeling horny. Even if she’s going to be the one raising the girl, can’t Rose at least kick Troy’s insufferable, reprehensible ass out of “his” house, just like Troy kicked out his mentally impaired brother Gabe, whose money bought the damn house? Troy and Rose continuing to live together would be a little less infuriating if she at least found a new man, but the movie flashes forward seven years and there’s no indication she’s done any dating.

That’s another thing – the time jump, during which Troy died offscreen! WTF?

It’s kind of maybe implied that the new kid kinda sorta made him a bit of a better person, but how would we fucking know when we don’t even see it dammit??????!!!!! Also, while Rose was raising this bastard child of Troy’s who now calls her “Mama”, she has apparently made no attempts to right the ship with the actual child she and Troy had together – you know the same one who tried stopping Troy from abusing her? Rose introduces Cory to the little girl for the first time, indicating that in seven years he hasn’t come home. He now does since Troy’s dead, but when he wants to skip the funeral Rose talks him out of it by defending that horrible asshole. She says, “Your father wanted you to be everything he is…but he also wanted you to be everything he isn’t.”

What the fuck does that even mean? So Troy wanted Cory to be every possible thing in the entire world? Not a football player apparently! That line of insipid dialogue reminds me of a time my sister tried to sound profound by asking, “Would you trade everything you’ve ever had for everything you’ve ever wanted?” Huh? Trade having a home? Food? Eyesight? Really dumb question. Sorry not sorry sis.

The last scene of the film is everyone celebrating Troy as if he’s some great man. That includes Rose, Cory, Gabe, and the one person to whom we see him show a hint of kindness – his oldest son Lyons, whom he loans money to early in the movie. Not without a bunch of jabbering though.

That’s the one other thing that irritates me about this movie. Troy never shuts up; he turns EVERYTHING into an excuse for a sing-songy monologue.

Case in point: this is apparently the movie’s signature scene but it bugged the hell out of me.

Troy was asked a very simple, straightforward question. In response, he blabbered on for nearly two minutes and I still had NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT THE GODDAMN ANSWER WAS! SERIOUSLY PEOPLE??!!! People seemingly want to keep gushing, “Denzel is amazing; how did he not win the Academy Award?!” while sidestepping what garbage the movie is. Makes me that much happier Denzel lost.

TL; DR A guy does absolutely what he wants, when he wants – shows no regard for anyone else, especially not the people he’s supposed to most love. Then years later he dies offscreen and we’re supposed to believe that maybe he became a better person but we don’t see it! Then everyone celebrates him like he was some great man. On top of all of that, he can’t answer a simple “yes or no” question without going into some long, spoken-word soliloquy.

The last thing I’ll say regards how this is apparently an extremely faithful adaptation of the play. Many say too faithful, as the movie comes across vary stagey, but that’s the least of its problems. That does make me feel like I’ve seen the play, and I’m pissed off! How did this ABOMINATION win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play while I can’t even find a publisher or professional producer for either of my finished works.

Inversion and Mother Grace are both light-years better than Fences. There, I said it. You be the judge though.

Here are links to an amateur production of the former and an online reading of the latter: