I am by no means a professional film critic, so I don’t want anyone who has decided to read this to be under the impression that I think I am. I did though want to outwardly and publicly process my thoughts and feelings after seeing “Fences” while everything is still fresh.
I’d never actually read the original play and so I didn’t get a huge understanding of what the storyline was. I knew that it was about a black family, and that there would be a home, and that the fence of course would have layers upon layers of meaning. I suspected that it would be about race, specifically about black-white racial tensions during the 1950s. I was mostly wrong, lol.
When we were lining up to see the movie, I was sort of surprised by how many white people were there. If this film was to tackle race in the ways that I was expecting, my assumption was that it would make white people uncomfortable and therefore deter them from coming. But alas we were all there.
When the movie started, Denzel’s character Tony was finishing up his job with his friend Mr. Bono; dumping folks’ trash in the dump truck. He arrived to his home with Mr. Bono where they share a bottle of gin and Tony began to tell a bunch of stories. The amount of talking Tony did was wearing me out because it seemed like he never stopped. One story would weave into another and into another and I recognized that the annoyance I felt was a familiar annoyance – the same annoyance I have with my dad when he gets off into telling fabricated stories. I kept waiting to get to where the movie would “begin” or where the plot would begin rather. But after about 10 minutes I realized that Tony was laying out the sociopolitical climate of that time in all of his stories if you had enough stamina to just sit and listen. You understood that (some) black people had come to a place where they could rent a house or drive a car; but that they paid ungodly high interest rates. You were able to pick up on the fact that Tony’s dad collected cotton for a living; meaning that he was not far removed from slavery. You understood that it was more likely that a black man would take up a trade, or work with his hands rather than go to college because jobs like those were moreso at one’s grasp. You learned that job security and home ownership were the bread and butter of not only the American post-war dream, but the Black American Post-War dream. Hard work was preached more than anything, and there was no time to have one’s head in the clouds.
Anywho, without giving an entire play-by-play of the movie I can say that it was unexpectedly triggering. I was uncomfortable with the fact that white people were there because I felt like the film was an intimate moment to be shared amongst black people only. Despite it being a film that would be played all over the U.S., it was like I wished to keep the sins of the Maxson family private. I was protective of their story because I feltlike it was, in a way the story of many black families and that white people did not deserve to peek into our pain. They didn’t deserve to because I didn’t feel like that pain would be shared, merely that it would be another spectacle, or another bookmark in their monolithic idea of the “black life.” I am still unsure about what they took from it, and uneasy about the fact that they watched at all. (If there are any white or non-black people who saw the film I’d be curious about your thoughts).
I saw my dad in almost every aspect of Tony’s character (besides the drinking and getting another woman pregnant). But his pride, his desire to be unlike his father while simultaneously repeating his father’s mistakes, his moments of charm and delicacy juxtaposed with his aggression and stubborn-nature were all personality traits my father has displayed. Even down to the sports dreams that didn’t go right. Broken dreams that turned into bitterness that turned into him shooting down his son’s dreams of playing sports. “I don’t like you but I have a responsibility to feed you” is what Tony told his son Cory when Cory asked Tony if he liked him. It was a chilling line that shook me right down to my bones. Tony didn’t understand the significance of being “liked” AS WELL AS provided for by one’s parents and that was frustrating. You could see the generational differences in terms of their perspective on parenting. There were phrases upon phrases upon phrases that I’d heard before – either by my parents or someone else’s. It was hard and heavy for me to get through because in many ways, the film was my reality.
I appreciated Uncle Gabe’s character, who’d had “half his head blown off from the war.” Tony often referred to the “metal plate in his head” as the reason for why he was mentally in another world. Uncle Gabe’s behavior was childlike, and he often referred to heaven and his job of “keeping hellhounds away” and “opening the gates.” It is literally just now that I am realizing that Uncle Gabe probably is a reference to the angel Gabriel of the Bible. Gabe’s character resided in a spiritual reality that made him seem that he had no sense but he had the most sense of them all. Tony is his warmest and his most vulnerable when he’s around Uncle Gabe and that was beautiful to see. Really, the variety of interactions between black men in the film – be it hugging, Lyons kissing his brother Cory on the forehead, Tony feeding Gabe, or even Tony saying, “I love you nigga” to Mr. Bono showed a different side of black masculinity that often isn’t shown.
Miss Rose….sigh. I could probably right a 12 page paper on the levels and layers and depths of her character. She struck chords within me that I tried to forget were there. I saw my mother, my sister, my friends, the black womyn in the beauty shop, the black women at church, the black grandmas I’d met, stories I’d overhead on the train, and that one key on the piano that had been played so many times that it sounded flat. She, the supportive wife, who cooked and cleaned and kept Tony’s life together; who keptthe family at peace, who was consistent and resilient and patient and faithful. She was the same woman who sat in that kitchen and nearly fell to the ground while Tony confessed that he has had a baby by another woman (at 54 years old). The same woman who Tony often dotes on and refers to as the “only good thing in his life.” SHE who read him his LIFE, while he tried to tell her that he’d been “Stuck for 18 years.” SHE who reminded him that she has goals and dreams and desires TOO. That he is not the only one who layed down in bed disappointed. She, who raised a baby that wasn’t hers by a woman she never even met. And none of us, none of the viewers ever meet the woman, we just know that he made Tony “happy.” That he can go to her house and “laugh from his stomach” and “not worry about his responsibilities.” Her character was but a rich slice of what life has been like for a black woman in America.
Every snotty-nosed tear that Rose cried hit me, and every time she tried to reason with Tony to allow Cory to play football resonated with me. Every ounce of truth she spoke just left me utterly and emotionally drained. When she continued to ask Tony to stop seeing the woman and he refused I was there. When she told Tony that the woman died giving birth to his baby, when she asked him not to shut her out I was there. Every plea, every decision to stay IN SPITE OF, hurt to watch because I had seen it so many times before.
In this film you see the nuances and the ways that life wears down on individuals. I saw how Tony was tormented, in his spirit and in his soul and how much he actually wanted to die. His father was “evil” as he said and his mother left them and passed away. “I hope he’s dead, maybe then he could have some peace,” is what Tony said while he was recounting the battle he’d had with his father. It is in that moment that I realized that Tony hoped to find solace in death because life was just too much. It was too heavy and he felt like he was carrying the weight all alone even if he wasn’t – even if he didn’t have to.
The entire time I kept waiting for something bad to happen. I kept waiting for Tony to hit Rose or for him to beat – even murder his son Cory. I kept waiting for violence because I just knew that there was only a matter of time before it happened. That fear speaks for itself, and the fact that I even felt it is sad in and of itself. It’s problematic.
When Rose let Tony know that he’d lost her as a wife, as a companion he began to build that fence. Rose had been asking him for a long while to build it for her but it wasn’t until he’d lost her that he actually did and that blew me. Perhaps it was because he figured it was the only thing left he could do to honor her. Perhaps it was because he was trying to keep in whatever was left of himself, perhaps it was because he was trying to salvage the family that he helped to tear apart. Perhaps it was because it helped him feel protected from death. By the time he did build that fence his family had already fallen apart, and the gesture, for the most part, seemed wasted on Rose. What did she need with a fence now when Tony had already stepped out on her?
Either way, the film showed vulnerability and inner struggle in both the lives of a cis-het black woman, and a cis-het black man. It showed the scars and bandages of generational damage that we heap upon each other. It showed the ways that we try to get away from our families, but how those memories and shortcomings continue to follow us…to haunt us. We wish to steer clear of them, but have to acknowledge that they are forever apart of us – no matter how far we run.
I shed tears a bit during and after, because I empathized with every single character in the film. Like Lyons I know what it feels like to be a struggling artist, and to have your parents not be apart of the art you so desperately want to share with them. Like Cory I know what it’s like to see your father try and give his best while still feeling robbed of a loving child-parent experience. I know what it’s like to be Rose and have your dreams and desires be an afterthought in the black male mind, for no one to perhaps consider that you deserve to take up room and space too. Like Tony I know what it’s like to wander into adulthood, and to wonder if you will ever amount to something more. Like Mr. Bono, I know what it’s like to see people I love falling into dangerous lands. Uncle Gabe mirrors my disabled sister Monica, who can’t speak words but is so genuine and pure in her expression. She knows that there is a spiritual reality to this world, and while she might not be able to speak words, she has a great deal of sense. She understands what’s really up. When I might otherwise be rough, she brings out the softness and kindheartedness in me.
I am still even at this moment trying to work through all of the feelings that this movie has conjured up, but I am appreciative for the labor of love that all the writers, directors, producers, actors, etc. put in to making the film possible. They all acted their butts off and transported me to another time and place. The setting of the film never really left the house, and it didn’t have to. Because the entirety of life happened on that back porch, on that front porch, in that kitchen, and in that backyard. And perhaps that was part of the message, that fences are often built to keep out trouble, but we need look no further than our own backyards to see the struggles running rampant in our own homes.
lafemmecompatissante 