His approach is that of devoted student trying to learn from a long-gone mentor. Denzel Washington is behind the chair, his third go-around as a director after Antwone Fisher and The Great Debaters. We must see him as a man who bleeds, heavily, and often from self-inflicted wounds.Įleven years after his 2005 death, Wilson finally gets his wish in perhaps the most widely acclaimed black actor of a generation. For it to work onscreen, a director needs to see this character as fully formed, not merely a product of his environment or a vehicle for sermonizing. Fences gives us a working-class black family in the 1950s, with particular focus on a father whose own rough go at life informs but doesn't fully excuse his behavior in his own household. Looking at the dynamics in the play, Wilson's need to see a filmmaker understand them as he did was understandable. Photo credit: David Lee/Paramount PicturesĪll his life, playwright August Wilson resisted any efforts to mount a screen adaptation of Fences, his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 work, because he insisted it could only be helmed by a black director. Denzel Washington as Troy Maxson and Viola Davis as Rose Maxson in Fences
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