Luis Martinez

Updated Thursday, February 29, 2024-23:46

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Wok is not the same as woke.

With the first you cook things and with the second, you don't.

Although a little too.

Let's say things happen differently.

Theoretically, woke thinking appeared so that life in general would be more tender, more pleasant, more bearable and would spread respect among everyone, especially in the only correct and vindictive direction:

from the owners of almost everything, including their own respect, towards the dispossessed by tradition.

But, as always happens, and without it being ever clear whether it was because the first, the owners of the privilege, saw their possessions in danger or because the second, the humiliated, decided to take (probably just) revenge, the fact is that the term associated with the awakening consciousness (woke) was left in the middle of the crossfire exactly like

a Chinese frying pan, or wok.

'American Fiction'

is the wok we needed to cook the woke.

We have arrived.

Cord Jefferson

thus debuts in the feature film (he previously worked in directing series such as the more than extraordinary '

Watchmen

') with an acidic, visionary and very funny fable about the limits of cultural appropriation, the errors of pious progressivism and, when the case, the eternally rancid nature of fascism, the classic, the lifelong apolitical.

That is, nothing we haven't thought we saw before.

The novelty in this case is intelligence, grace and the absolute lack of both prejudices

and, most importantly, morals.

No one is safe in this tale as melancholic and clear as it is slightly ruthless.

The starting point is the correct one.

Not even original and dazzlingly brilliant, just the right one.

A writer determined to just be a writer sees how good customs, the publishing market, hypocrisy and even guilt carried over for centuries forces him to be a "black writer" or to be nothing.

That is,

he is expected to turn identity into the only possible scenario of his creation.

The intention is good.

Perhaps it is about recovering the voices that have been lost for too long and awakening them, hence woke.

But of course, that in itself and without asking permission from the supposedly liberated person is still the condescending aggression of a lifetime, that of charity in the most charitable of the docile and soft senses.

The virtue and success of the film is that it is the black author himself who wakes up and demands his woke moment in a world where everyone wants to see him woke.

I don't know if you understand the double twist, but that's what it's about:

folding and undoing what was woken on the fire or grill of this beautiful wok that is '

American Fiction'

.

When tired of so much paternalistic good intention, our hero decides to pass himself off as the writer that everyone wants him to be (who, basically, is a bad writer), then the seams will burst, the wounds will fester or the flesh will open, as you wish. , but that will start bleeding.

The entire film remains suspended from the serious and slightly enraged good work of a giant

Jeffrey Wright

.

From him and from a

Sterling K. Brown

who was really successful in his nihilistic interpretation of homosexuality liberated from him (this issue also deserves a few lines).

Jefferson opts for a transparent staging and lets the script and the always contained performance itself do the talking.

It is true that, at times, the calm rhythm comes dangerously close to the monotonous TV movie.

And so on until reaching a simply plethoric ending that excuses everything.

How well woke is cooked in this beautiful woke wok.

By the way, the fact that it was released directly on Prime Video without going through the cinema borders on being petty.

Everything be said.

—

Director

: Cord Jefferson.

Starring

: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, Erika Alexander, Issa Rae, Sterling K. Brown, John Ortiz.

Duration

: 127 minutes.

Nationality

united states.