Movie Review: "Fences"

"Fences": B+.  August Wilson, the late St. Paul playwright, wrote ten plays about the American black experience, each of the plays occurring in a different decade of the twentieth century.  Hollywood superstar Denzel Washington has announced his intention to help produce movie versions of all ten of those plays, and Fences is the first offering in the proposed series.  The story takes place in 1950's Pittsburgh, with the central character, Troy Maxson, played by Washington himself, who also directs.

Maxson is a fifty-three year old sanitation worker who, along with lifelong friend Bono (the superb Stephen McKinley Henderson), rides on the back of the city's garbage trucks, lifting the heavy refuse cans and dumping the contents into the back of the truck.  Troy aspires to one day be promoted to driver, a position which he claims is reserved exclusively for the white guys.  Troy gets paid every Friday, and he routinely brings home his entire wages to wife Rose (Viola Davis), who in turn grants him an allowance.  Most of that allowance is spent at the local saloon.

 

Even though being a garbage man is not the most glorious of vocations, Troy is pretty proud of himself, and isn't bashful about boasting of his accomplishments.  He is what I like to call a "pontificator." He is a self-proclaimed authority on everything, especially life.  Most of his verbal opinions are unsolicited, but Bono and Rose are willing listeners.  Some of the most enjoyable moments of the film are those showing the three of them having animated discussions in the Maxsons' tiny back yard. The same willingness can't be said for Troy's two sons, Lyons (Russell Hornsby) and Cory (Jovan Adepo).

 

Lyons is an accomplished musician who annoys Troy by frequently stopping by on his father's payday.  We first meet Lyons on a Friday, and sure enough he has asked Troy for a twenty dollar loan, with assurances that the loan will be repaid quickly.   Troy at first refuses to lend his son the money, essentially calling him a deadbeat, but thanks to Rose's intervention, the loan is made.  This is the first of many times Rose steps forward as the more level-headed of the married twosome.   Lyons, who is an adult, is able to overlook Troy's abrasiveness.  In contrast, the younger son, Cory, lives under Troy's roof and has a harder time digesting his father's mean, arbitrary and hurtful rules.  Troy's refusal to permit Cory to play high school football because doing so would cut back on his after-school job hours has a direct impact on the youngster's future.

 

One might mull over the question of why Wilson titled his story Fences.  There is a real fence which Troy has promised to build for his wife around their property, but he has placed that project on the back burner.  The title is obviously a metaphor, with one possibility being that Troy has built an imaginary fence separating what he considers to be his role as a parent-enforcer from what should also be his role as a loving parent.  He is unable to execute both roles, even going so far as to ask young Cory if there is any law which requires a parent to like his son.  In Troy's mind, putting a roof over his son's head, clothes on his back and food in his stomach should suffice.  As for Lyons, Troy rejects Bono's suggestion to go to the jazz club to hear Lyons play.  Only top notch musicians are invited to play there, but Troy quickly dismisses Bono's wise counsel. Opportunity lost.

 

The other running metaphor throughout the story is baseball.  Troy was a Negro League star thirty years ago.  He claims he could still, in the present, hit better than the white outfielder who starts for the Yankees.  Troy has a baseball tied to a string hanging from a tree in his yard.  As he swings a bat at that ball, he pontificates that life's problems are like a two-strike fastball on the outside corner.  You just have to learn how to hit it.  When he and Cory get into a physical confrontation, he tells his son he's down to his last strike.

 

There is a revelation half way through the story which turns Troy's world upside down.  Even then he has a hard time finding fault within.  This is a prime example of a man being his own worst enemy.

 

The third act of the movie is weak, cliched and mostly unbelievable.  Maybe Wilson felt that his ending was the only way to tie things up, but compared to the rest of the story it almost seems written by another author.  Notwithstanding those shortcomings, I will be surprised if the film is not a contender for most of the big awards in the next couple of months, and deservedly so.

 

The film's greatest asset is the performance of the two leads.  Ordinarily Troy would be an unlikable person, but in the hands of Washington he almost wins us over.  Even more impressive is Davis as the loyal wife who knows when to put up with her very flawed husband and when to assert herself in the interest of her family.  In every scene in which the two of them appear, Davis is the equal of the great Washington.  In most of his pictures, Washington is a scene stealer; Davis does not let that happen here.  Davis is most effective when Rose is suffering from a broken heart.  Washington is not called upon to do that in this story, as Troy is a man without a heart.