It took a long time for “Fences,” arguably August Wilson’s most formidable and iconic play, to be made into a movie. That’s because the late playwright was adamant that only a black director possessed of sufficient maturity and life experience could do it — or any of the 10 plays of his “Pittsburgh Cycle” — justice.
Starring: Denzel Washington, Viola Davis.
Rating: PG-13 for rough language and sexual innuendo.
On its face, imposing a color test about who can direct a movie based on a play feels like a concession to the same kind of racism that has worked against the interest of black artists in America for decades. It feels like an affront to every egalitarian instinct.
How can anyone, including a playwright who wants to see his or her art translated to the big screen, give so much ground to the same essentialist logic that locks people of different backgrounds into their own experience and out of yours? Isn’t art supposed to be the path to liberation?
This important question isn’t easy to resolve to everyone’s satisfaction philosophically, but we can talk about the practical outcome of Mr. Wilson’s insistence on a black director in the case of “Fences” — the film is a triumph of expanded stagecraft and cinematic vision thanks to the skill and conscientiousness of director Denzel Washington.
Early on it becomes clear that “Fences” will combine the brooding intensity of Mr. Wilson’s stage poetry with the more expansive view of the play’s social context that only film can provide.
“Fences” opens with a shot of Troy Maxson (Mr. Washington) and his best friend and co-worker Bono (Stephen Henderson) riding the back of a white sanitation truck through the streets of the Hill District sometime in the late 1950s.
The friends swap racial put-downs, rib each other hard and gripe about the white man. It is also an opportunity for Troy to speak the truth about how assignments are doled out — who gets to drive in comfort in the garbage truck and who gets to pick up the garbage. It’s a mini lesson in how racism operated in Pittsburgh in the ’50s.
Collecting trash, signing the time cards to collect that week’s paycheck and going home to hand it all over to his wife, Rose (Viola Davis), are views of Troy’s world we’ve only heard about through dialogue previously.
Seeing the period cars parked along the streets and the children, black and white playing stickball together, is a real thrill. This is the bustling, life-filled Hill District those of us who came decades later have always heard about but have never seen.
There’s nothing like a skilled director and attention to period detail to kick up the verisimilitude quotient. Those establishing shots on the streets of the Hill District, the walk home after the shift and the transition to the familiar confines of home with its exterior dilapidation and interior aspiration to bourgeois order, go a long way in pulling us into the fiery domestic drama that will soon follow.
Although he does a lot of laughing and teasing those he loves most, Troy is a bundle of barely controlled rage over his humble circumstances.
We learn he was once a Negro League home run king who peaked before major league baseball integrated. The things he says about Jackie Robinson are hilarious and profane, but it gives us insight into the weight of his resentments.
When his 17-year-old son, Cory (Jovan Adepo), announces he’ll be going to football practice after school instead of doing the meaningless chores Troy has devised for him daily, the scene is set for a bitter and irreconcilable battle of wills.
Meanwhile Rose tries to maintain the peace by feeding her husband, ignoring his petty cruelties and keeping her son out of his line of fire. Troy’s brother Gabriel (Mykelti Williamson), who has intellectual disabilities, pops in and out of their home with the latest updates on St. Peter standing at the Pearly Gates.
Troy’s oldest son, Lyons (Russell Hornsby), whom he fathered with another woman just before going to prison for a decade, is a jazz musician. Lyons would rather grab $10 from Troy, despite the humiliation, than take a job at the sanitation department with his father.
As in the play, “Fences” follows the combustible interplay of these characters as they orbit Troy, fighting, cajoling and pleading with him as befits any monarch of the realm.
Only Troy’s friend Bono has an unobstructed view of his duplicity and lies. Bono gently calls Troy on his emotional double-dealing before things go irrevocably bad for him. The movie’s central drama is the comeuppance and emotional wreckage that ensues from his folly.
“Fences” doesn’t completely escape the curse of exposition. The first act feels like a play despite the street scenes, but the movie opens up once scenes move to the backyard in the second and third acts. It feels more cinematic once the emotional stakes kick into high gear.
Of course, the acting is magnificent. Both Mr. Washington and Ms. Davis engage in the equivalent of a heavyweight match as they alternate between sexy teasing and two-fisted emotional warfare. Mr. Henderson is an island of emotional stability and humor while Mr. Adepo is persuasive as a brooding teenager who can’t wait to assert his own will — even if it comes at the expense of his father’s fragile dignity and authority.
Mr. Hornsby and Mr. Williamson have smaller roles, but they’re pivotal. There’s not a wasted shred of dialogue to be found in “Fences.” Saniyya Sidney as Raynell is adorable.
As for August Wilson’s conceit that “Fences” and all of his plays have black directors when they’re made into movies, there’s something to be said for having someone at the helm who understands the subtlety of the black experience when it is this intense and socially specific. These are not the plays that a director in need of a crash course in blackness should tackle.
That’s not to say a master like Martin Scorsese wouldn’t have made a perfectly adequate adaptation just based on the text, but it would’ve lacked the authentic feel of a black home in midcentury America that Mr. Washington captures perfectly.
If there’s a guy standing there with Mr. Washington’s skill and familiarity with Mr. Wilson’s vision, it makes sense to go with him. If Mr. Washington wants to do all 10 plays in the cycle, then Mr. Wilson’s legacy is in exceedingly good hands.
Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1631.
First Published: December 24, 2016, 5:00 a.m.