Column on Fences

August Wilson was an American treasure. The new movie, Fences, is based on his play and his screenplay. It is directed by its star, Denzel Washington, who would not take on the role until he had played it, with his co-star, Viola Davis, on Broadway.

The title is a rich metaphor. It starts with a privacy fence for their small plot of a back yard, but expands to include what we fence off from each other and from ourselves. It includes the social fences we construct between race, gender, age, and perhaps most importantly, class divisions.

It is set in the mid fifties in Pittsburgh. (Eventually, Wilson would write a series of plays that would span decades of the 20th Century). It uses an extended family as the lens to examine both family life and the culture at that time.

The father, Troy,  is embittered. He is part of that great American trope of a fine athlete who never had the chance to  become a star. While he played in the Negro leagues, he was too old to try to try out for the newly integrated Major League. So, he works hard in the sanitation department. He feels as if his life has been in neutral the length of his 18 year marriage. Instead of facing everyday brutalities stoically, he talks. He is strong but definitely not strong and silent.

Locked into the respectability of working every day, he feels imprisoned. He realizes that currents of change are sweeping through the country, but he also knows the strength of countervailing forces. To relieve that internal struggle, he constantly preaches about the importance of hard work and learning a trade. Unable to have broken through barriers himself, he is unwilling to even see that the new generation may be on the cusp of a new world.

Wilson takes dead aim at the dysfunction of family life. The lead character  has an adult son from a youthful affair,. The son is a fine jazz player who visits only on payday to “borrow” some money. His teenaged son  is a gifted athlete, but the father is distrustful and wary,  as he sees in him the promise that was snuffed out in his own life. The mother, Rose, lives out her name. She is at times a mediator between the two, and the authority in household finance, and a woman who finds solace in the church, as she is determined to keep this family, her family together. She embodies a love so deep that  it can threaten her own sense of self, a sit is placed in the sidelines for those whom she loves.

Troy says, “Death ain’t nothin’ but a fastball on the outside corner.” Death hovers about as an unseen but potent character in the film. Troy’s brother fought in WWII and was terribly injured and lives on disability money for his brain injury. That horror has allowed Troy to  be able to have a roof over their heads as their own. He thinks he is an angel of God, a messenger, with a trumpet strung around his neck. Troy recites in detail a story of his own mano a mano with Death, even as he realizes that he is inching toward Death’s victory over him, and all of us.

For me, the arts take a situation and character we can recognize and show how connected we are in experience, feeling, and thought. The everyday then transcends the moment and points the way to our common humanity. Washington realizes this and feels no need to lard the film with the fireworks of film technique that can distract an audience from  a script that requires nothing more than careful attention.