Doomsday
Administrator 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Posts: 23,303 
Likes: 6,769
Location:
Last Online Nov 25, 2024 1:15:09 GMT -5
|
Post by Doomsday on Dec 31, 2016 17:26:48 GMT -5
 Based on the play by somebody, Fences shows an aging couple as they deal with the anxieties of job security, children, relatives and tests to their marriage. Troy (Denzel) is the focal character, a man whose past haunts him and keeps him dwelling on the things he lost or taken from him. He has an unorthodox sense of responsibility that must be imparted to his son, a rising high school football star who wants to get out from under Troy's roof and start his own life. Troy also feels the pinch of possibly losing his job and seeing to the needs of his severely handicapped brother. Through all this sits Rose (Viola), Troy's wife who devotes herself to him while watching him suffer with his own insecurities. Although trailers by and large are harmless, there were some scenes that should have been kept to the movie primarily the line pertaining to 'fences being built to keep people in' as well as divulging that Troy had a secret that he needed to tell Rose. While Fences comes off as a drama about family turmoil, the real story comes from the tension that Troy brings upon each character. He's dissatisfied in his station, his job, he resents that he never made it as a professional baseball player which he takes out on his son Cory, and takes his wife for granted. The title Fences is a metaphor, you see? Instead of keeping things out Troy's fences are meant to keep people in, get it? Anyways, the characters drive Fences. Like most movies based on plays it is relegated mainly to one location with a handful of principle characters and with these few ingredients the tension boils until it comes to a head. It reminds me a bit of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in that sense and while it's not unique it is certainly effective. Denzel is also good behind the camera and the camerawork and editing help craft its own cinematic feel. I think Denzel and Viola will probably win Oscars for their performances here, they're certainly who I'm betting my money on. They're well deserved and while I don't see this as a major Best Picture contender it's one that has plenty going for it in the acting department. A- so says Doomsday |
|
PG Cooper
CS! Silver
Join Date: Feb 2009
And those who tasted the bite of his sword named him...The DOOM Slayer
Posts: 16,649
Likes: 4,066
Location:
Last Online Nov 25, 2024 0:10:25 GMT -5
|
Post by PG Cooper on Jan 9, 2017 15:46:43 GMT -5
Hollywood has a surprisingly large history of movie-stars turning into successful directors. It is not surprising that big name actors would be attracted to these roles given they’re already use to having a lot of control and the job promises more, but what is surprising is how many of these transitions are handled successfully. Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, George Clooney, and Ben Affleck are among the most prominent examples of movie-stars who were able to build a reputation has good directors in their own right. Not all of these directors are equal, but all are major talents and it could also be argued that each of the aforementioned are a better director than they are an actor. Denzel Washington is another movie-star who has dabbled in directing, but while his early efforts were considered respectable, neither really broke out as major works. With his newest effort, however, Denzel may have solidified himself as a formidable director. That film is Fences, an intimate drama based on an August Wilson play that has already earned Denzel much acclaim on stage.
Fences is set in 1950s Pittsburgh and focuses on Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) a middle-aged black man working as a garbage collector. Troy is described as once being a highly skilled baseball player, but a combination of racism and Troy’s age kept him from pursuing this as a career. Instead, Troy lives with his second wife Rose (Viola Davis) and their teenage son Cory (Jovan Adepo). Like his father, Cory also has athletic prowess. His talents have led to Cory being selected for a football scholarship, something Troy objects to on the grounds that sports never served Troy well. The two conflict over the issue and the family is beset by other problems brought on by Troy and his choices.
That plot description makes the film seem a fairly straight-forward battle of wills between father and son, though that isn’t strictly accurate. While that story does run-through a bulk of the running time, Fences is more of an episodic piece while the family deals with various issues, many involving other major characters like Troy’s best friend Jim Bono (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and Troy’s brother Gabe (Mykelti Williamson), who was mentally disabled in World War Two. The film very skillfully navigates these subplots, which are all interesting and integrated nicely. It’s also important to note that while this is a very dramatic story, it is not dour or overwhelming. For all the moments of tension, there are also moments of joy and frivolity, most scenes in fact run the gamut between dramatic and playful. That makes for potentially more palatable viewing, but it also makes the story a lot more realistic. Life is made up of peaks and valleys after all and this is a film which presents both.
Complimenting the nuanced story are the characters, who are complex and very well-drawn. At the center is Troy, who at times can be arrogant, condescending, and even frightening, but he’s also a hard-working man with a giant personality and a great sense of joy. What’s more, much of his hard nature derives from lessons he learned in his own life and he is trying to provide for his family the best he can. He’s still prone to selfish action, but he isn’t the simplistic villain he could have been. Crucial to this is Denzel’s performance, who effortlessly brings the charisma and charm which makes Troy likable and also has the chops to pull off the character’s more complex layers and emotional conveyance. Acting opposite Washington is Viola Davis as Troy’s wife, Rose. Much of Davis work in the first half of the film is subtly playing Rose as a loving woman, but also someone strong enough to challenge, and even overcome, Troy. It’s a great performance, one escalated further in the second half when Rose becomes more crucial to the story and Davis’ performance raises the emotional stakes. There’s one scene in particular between Troy and Rose where both characters lay their emotions bare and the acting showcase is among the year’s best.
Both performers are reprising their roles from a 2010 revival of the play and the same can be said for much of the supporting cast. That familiarity certainly helps I’m sure, but the fact is the new actors blend just as well with those who have previously performed the material. That Fences is a stage adaptation is fairly obvious. The cast is limited and the film does have a stage bound feel. Most of the action occurs within Troy and Rose’s home, and within that home the same three locations are used repeatedly. This is however, something the viewer should make peace with early on. As a director, Denzel employs enough visual prowess to remain visually engaging without becoming a distraction. Scenes are blocked effectively and the camera movement does serve the story, but for the most part, Denzel is content to hold back and let the actors and screenplay tell the story.
Will Fences be the film to establish Denzel Washington as a major director? Honestly, I suspect it won’t. The film is very indebted to its stage roots and while Denzel’s direction is skillful and correct for the material, it might be a little too subtle and minimal to really resonate on a grand scale. Regardless, it is the best arguments for Denzel’s talents behind the camera and a fine piece of cinema. The film has something of a multiple endings problem and the final note they close on does strike me as a little hokey, on the whole this is a well-realized work. What it comes down to is the writing and the performances. This is some very well-crafted drama, the characters are wonderfully complex, and the acting is excellent, both from the celebrity leads and the lesser known supporting cast. Fences is the kind of dignified drama we say we want more of.
A-
|
|
Dracula
CS! Gold
Join Date: Sep 2002
Posts: 26,105
Likes: 5,732
Location:
Last Online Nov 25, 2024 1:15:32 GMT -5
|
Post by Dracula on Jan 14, 2017 18:34:03 GMT -5
Fences(12/26/2016)
August Wilson was likely one of the most unanimously revered playwrights of the second half of the twentieth century and he also lived in my home state for about ten years, a fact that was more than enough for the local English teachers to adopt him as a hometown hero despite the fact that every one of his plays was set elsewhere. As such I’m somewhat familiar with his work, but for whatever reason I was never assigned to read his most famous work “Fences,” perhaps because those English teachers all wanted to explore the deep cuts rather than the play that everyone would theoretically find without their help. “Fences” was often viewed as being sort of a black response to “Death of a Salesman” which makes some sense structurally and thematically even if it is a little reductive. It was something of a sensation when premiered on Broadway in the late eighties it won the Pulitzer, the Tony, and also won a Tony for its original star James Earl Jones. Needless to say this is material that has largely been canonized and is not to be adapted lightly. The play was however successfully revived in 2010 with a cast which included Denzel Washington and Viola Davis and now that revival has been adapted into a feature film with Washington himself directing.
The film is set in the Hill District of Pittsburgh during the 1950s and focuses on an average working class African American family called the Maxsons. The patriarch of the family, Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington) has been working as a garbage man for decades and has raised a teenage son named Cory (Jovan Adepo) along with his wife Rose (Viola Davis). As the film begins things are looking fairly decent for the family; Troy is lobbying to get a promotion that has historically not been available to African Americans, Cory is proving to be a talented football player, and the family is soon going to have a nice picket fence to spruce up their home. However there are cracks in this nice veneer that will soon threaten to implode this tight family dynamic and they first show themselves when it’s revealed that Cory has put his job at a corner store on hold so that he can attend football practice, a move that would seem irresponsible until you realize that his skill is such that he’s already attracted the attention of a college scout and could get a scholarship from this skill. Troy, played Negro League baseball in his youth and experienced the frustration of having never advanced beyond that because of his race and as such doesn’t see that as any kind of a valid hope for his son’s future and stubbornly refuses to allow the son to continue this pursuit.
Given that this play has basically entered the cannon of American literature at this point it almost feels presumptuous to weigh in on any of this material in and of itself, but I do have a few reservations. The biggest is that I feel like the conflict that the play builds between the father and the son all through the first act sort of seems to be sort of pushed to the wayside in the second half in place of a different conflict with his wife which I will not reveal. That second conflict is of course interesting as well but I would have liked to have seen how that tension over the son’s potential football career would have played out if the focus had stayed there. I also maybe could have lived without a sub-plot involving Troy’s brain damaged brother and I’ve also never been particularly fond of August Wilson’s occasional dabbling in magical realism as he does in the epilog here. Those quibbles having been aired, it is clear from this movie that this play does live up to its reputation and is clearly a very poignant character study about a flawed man trying to live up to the pressures and expectations of being a patriarch.
Of course with a film like this the question is really less a matter of how good the material is so much as how good the adaptation was, and the answer to that almost entirely depends on how you feel about stage plays being turned into films with minimal attempt to conceal the theatrical origins of the text. The movie is certainly doing nothing to hide the fact that it’s based on a play. A few scenes certainly appear to have been relocated to other locations but most of the action takes place in the back yard of the family’s house and the dialogue certainly leans more towards long speeches than any movie written directly for the screen is likely to indulge in. Of course the film has the benefit of something that the stagings of the play at your local repertory theater company don’t have: it has a world class cast anchored by Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, who are both operating at the height of their abilities. Washing ton in particular is impressive here, albeit in a very certain kind of theatrical way. My one real reference point for this character is a Youtube video I found with a three-some minute clip of James Earl Jones doing the play’s signature “why don’t you like me” scene. Judging a Tony winning performance by a short clip like that is pretty stupid but what I noticed was that Jones’ take on the character seemed a lot more stern and withdrawn into himself. Washington by contrast seems to be playing the character a bit looser and lets you see a bit more of the character’s roguish past.
If there’s any reservations I have about Washington’s performance it’s that it doesn’t have a ton of internal range. Washington starts at about a 9 on the intensity range, moves to a 10 frequently, and occasionally pushes into an 11, but never goes much below a 9. Of course the material invites this and he probably shouldn’t have played it any other way, but it is not the kind of actively naturalistic acting that most modern filmmaking trades in. That can kind of be said about most of the movie as it is unapologetic in the fact that it’s speaking the language of theater rather than the language of cinema and one’s enjoyment of the movie is going to mostly be rooted in how one feels about that. Personally I think that does kind of diminish the movie, at least when you’re directly comparing it within the larger world of cinematic accomplish, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t still have a lot of value for what it’s trying to be. I’m not someone who gets out to the theater very often for a variety of reasons and I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people out there like me in this regard. I’m also not inclined to read plays like books and don’t have much of an interest in seeing filmed plays through Fathom events and the like. As such these stage-to-screen adaptations are often my only real way to experience great works of theater like this. So, for a play like “Fences” to be brought to the screen competently like this and with a cast like this is a pretty good thing any way you cut it.
**** out of Five
|
|
Dhamon22
Studio Head
Join Date: Jan 2008
Upon Further Review...
Posts: 7,539
Likes: 45
Location:
Last Online Dec 27, 2021 10:13:04 GMT -5
|
Post by Dhamon22 on Jan 19, 2017 0:01:55 GMT -5
Heavy 7.5/10
Great performances of course and a movie I would definitely recommend but this might be the rare case where I'd rather watch a stage version of a story. Nothing against plays I just haven't seen many and its hasn't been my cup of tea from what I have seen.
|
|
