American Fiction (2023)

Brilliant, Playful, Funny Film Stuffed Full of Delicious Dramatic Irony & Timely Issues on Race etc - American Fiction review by PV

OK so first off to say I dislike so many 'black' movies made since the divisive racist fraud that is Black Lives Matter seeped to the UK from the USA like putrid pus, causing anger, division, hatred, and the zero-sum-game of black v white wars, and more.

The UK is NOT the USA - black people in our history are negligible in number, with just 6000 black here in 1939, 8000 in 1945 thanks to black GIs fathering 2000 babies. The UK never had slavery here, it was banned in Britain in 11th century - and in fact Britons WERE slaves a lot for many centuries, millennia actually, to Romans, Vikings (based in Dublin where in 900AD the known world;s biggest slave market was held every year), then Ottoman Muslim Arab slavers (who stole 2.5 million from Europe, males often castrated, white blonde blue-eyed girls valued as sex slaves in hareems), and raids on our coast by Africans (Berbers, Muslim Barbary 'pirates') until 1800 when the last coastal slave raid happened. Yes, really. They do not teach this at schools. They should.

MOONLIGHT was great (adapted from a play) but most are preachy and often racist, aimed at hating on socalled 'white' people (no-one in the UK used that phrase until 1990s). Many movies made just to 'tell black stories' etc are not, ditto with #metoo movies. Many are loss-making.

This, however, is sublime and well deserved its BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Oscar - the novel it's based on was published 2001 and that really is when it's set (makes more sense in many ways if viewers factor that in, re army uniform, gay rights etc; though there are mobile phones here).

The story of a university teacher suspended after complaints re racism etc is not new. It's in the film THE HUMAN STAIN and lots of novels, including campus novels like CRUMP and SOMEWHERE IN EUROPE. ALL it takes is one student to mishear a remark and... In this case, use of words is the reason, They'rs just puffin words as Ken Dodd said - there is NO SUCH THING as a racist, sexist or hateful word. The CONTEXT and INTENTION of the speaker is everything and gives words meaning, AND YET in the UK we're all forced to take the knee to imported divisive race hate mob BLM nonsense and refer to 'the N word'. that is NOT progress.

Re imposters well it's done re gender mostly, from SOME LIKE IT HOT to MRS DOUBTFIRE - and recently a Spanish TV writing award was won by a woman writer, BUT she did not exist. Three men wrote together under her name. Fact is, being a 'white male' now will get you discriminated against in the TV, film and publishing industries, so expect more people claiming to be BAME or female to get on the many BAME-only and female-only schemes now (BBC/ITV have run such racist sexist schemes since the mid 1990s!) One remembers with a cringe the 1980s movie SOUL MAN with a black Michael J Fox and TRUE IDENTITY with a white Lenny Henry. The black one was bad enough... Then there's WHITE CHICKS (based a lot on SOME LIKE IT HOT).

Anyway, this film is deeply satisfying and made me laugh out loud many times, but it's also intelligent, witty and meaningful, even profound inplaces. Jeffrey Wright perfectly cast as the upper-middle class privileged black professor slumming it as a gangsta author imposter. I loved Cillian Murphy in Peaky Blinders but really think Oppenheimer is not that great a movie and that Wright (as seen in Westworld TV drama) should have won that Best Actor Oscar. His character's younger brother less well cast and his Best Supporting Actor nomination is the usual diversity tickbox, I think, which this film satirised so well.

The weakest parts of the movie are the relationships scenes, of main and minor characters, romantic subplots etc. Not needed imho.

So 4.5 stars rounded up.