Trailer for the movie "American Story"/Lev cinemas
"American Fiction" is one of the biggest cinematic sensations of the year.
This is a low-budget indie film in American terms, ten million dollars, which was not really on the radar before the start of the awards season.
Since its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, where it won the prestigious audience favorite award, it has not stopped garnering praise, statuettes and nominations.
Among other things, the hit is nominated for five Oscars, including for best film, and is expected to win the adapted screenplay category - after already picking up a similar statuette at the British Academy Awards.
Now, a few weeks after it was already successfully distributed in America and several other countries, it is finally coming up with us, when it also has an Israeli connection - it was produced by Ram Bergman.
"American Tale" is nominated in the adapted screenplay category because screenwriter-director Cord Jefferson, who is his first feature-length film, wrote it based on a book by Percil Everett that came out back in 2001, but its content is still relevant.
Jeffrey Wright plays Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, an unpopular lecturer whose novels he writes don't really find an audience either.
A look at the bestseller lists and the names of the winners of literary awards make it clear to him what the establishment and the audience expect from him, as a black man: to write "rough" books in street language, full of stereotypes and clichés, for example characters of black criminals.
He pretends to be one of these, and sends the book publishers a book he wrote based on his experiences in the world of crime.
His life's work.
Jeffrey Wright in "American Story"/Lev Cinema
The book was written as a joke, as a satire, but just as happens in "The Producers" and as happened at the time with the "Hashroff" case and recently in the case of the correspondence between the "mothers" regarding birthday gifts - the world falls into the trap, and the business gets out of control.
The novel becomes the talk of the day, a Hollywood producer buys the film rights to it, and the funniest of all: Monk is invited to serve on the jury of an important literary award, who wants to tone his face and appeals to him solely because of the color of his skin, and is required, among other things, to judge his own ridiculous book, which of course becomes to the favorite to win.
Stories about such acts of cheating have an understandable dramatic power.
They arouse tension, because the question arises as to whether, when and how the fraud will be discovered, and there is an ironic dimension to them - because we know something that most of the characters in the film do not know.
Here, for example, the only ones who understand that the hot book is nothing more than one big joke are the author himself, his agent - and us.
"American Story" is witty and entertaining because it does well to play with the tension and the irony it has, to keep them and intensify them in its climax.
The script is topical and universal.
The scenes depicting what happens in the judging committee help to reflect the clueless hypocrisy of academia, culture and the media these days.
As Mekcapofrit Livnavna fights for a prize for a book because it is important to "make one's voice heard" without realizing that the joke is on her, one can imagine her next year fighting for a prize for a book about Gaza even though she didn't really read it, didn't really like it and certainly didn't understand it.
The film talks about the black community and its representation in American culture, but it could easily be remade in Israel, centered on an oriental writer who writes a satire on peripheral culture that is taken with abysmal seriousness and wins the Sapir Prize.
More in Walla!
His Israeli accent is laughed at, but he has become one of the most powerful producers in Hollywood
To the full article
Ten million dollars, a million prizes.
From "American Story"/Lev Cinema
The film has many virtues, which make it sharp, engrossing, intelligent and very enjoyable to watch.
One of its main advantages is the performance of Jeffrey Wright, a veteran actor who thanks to her received his first Oscar nomination, and rightly so - he does the role of his life here.
In a way reminiscent of Paul Giamatti in "Staying for the Holiday", his character is bitter, frustrated, hostile and negative.
Played by another actor, she might have become defiant and unbearable, but thanks to the sensitive, vulnerable and highly nuanced actor, she manages to evoke sympathy.
He also does a good job portraying the different identities of his hero - in several scenes he poses as the street criminal turned writer.
The film has a juicy collection of supporting characters.
One of the interesting ones is Sinatra, played by the excellent Issa Rae.
This is the black author who cracked the system and writes the type of successful books that Monk seeks to despise, but is at peace with her decisions.
It could have been a caricature character, one that stands on the standard of the hero's nemesis and nothing else, but the film builds it in a much more complex way.
Another storyline of the film deals with the protagonist's family dramas - he has trouble maintaining a stable relationship, his Alzheimer's mother has trouble accepting his gay brother, and a medical tragedy strikes the family members.
Apparently, these are quite routine stories, the kind we've seen many times, but that's exactly the point - "American Story" asks why it's okay to create a million books and movies about white people to whom everything that happens is prosaic personal affairs, but if the protagonists are black, the plot must be connected with extreme violence .
Amusing and complex supporting characters (for the most part).
From "American Story"/Lev Cinema
In 1989, Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" won both the Cannes Film Festival and the Oscars.
Today it is considered one of the most significant American films of our generation, and it would obviously have been released today - it would have won an Oscar.
The interesting and beautiful thing about "American story" is that it is not satisfied with that.
He is not comfortable with the fact that this and only this film would have won the award, because it is part of the problem and not the solution - another angry film by a radical black filmmaker, which presents blacks in the context of crime and violence.
What "American Story" asks is - when will we, just like the whites, star in bestseller lists and award ceremonies even without someone pointing a gun at us (and Jews can ask - and when will a film whose protagonists are Jews win an Oscar without dealing with the Holocaust?).
Although most of the film is smiling and joking, its final image provides a rather pessimistic answer to this question.
Not much has changed in the 23 years since the book on which it is based was published, but if the film does win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, at least it will be a small step towards change.
More on the same topic:
Oscar
Jeffrey Wright
Ram Bergman