Baseball

Baseball, racial tension, and garbage men; what do these things have in common? They are all heavily featured in Denzel Washington's fast talking, hard hitting, third directorial feature. This is Fences.

Life has been tough on Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington). He was once an aspiring pro baseball player but never made it due to his race, so he believes. He has a loving wife, Rose (Viola Davis) who supports him and guides him as he strives to support his family. He has a brother Gabriel (Mykelti Williamson) who has a mental disorder, an estranged son, Lyons (Russell Hornsby), who only comes by for money once a week, and a younger son, Cory (Jovan Adepo), who has the potential to be a pro football player. We see Troy juggle these relationships, but keeping up a wall, not letting anyone penetrate or get too close. But when you've seen life chew up people and spit them out, it's hard to share warmth and encouragement with your family when reality is not so kind.

There's no shortage of films about racial oppression at the Oscars this year (13th, Loving, Hidden Figures), but Fences is perhaps the most striking of them all. Its main narrative is one of family under pressure and beneath that is the undercurrent of a systematically racially bias society. This is also a film driven by powerful performances from every member of the cast. Denzel Washington is electrifying, rattling through his mini-monologues at a lightning fast pace and it is mesmerising. He is at his best here, fresh off an award winning run of Fences on Broadway with co-star Viola Davis, Washington delivers a monumental performance as Troy having been able to absorb the character during its time on stage. Davis too, in a supporting role here as the gentle housewife Rose, is on top form and this maybe her year to finally take the Oscar statuette home that she has deserved since The Help. Keeping up with her Broadway co-star and hitting every beat where he lets up his pace the film keeps moving and when those gaps in flow come, the audience notice. The leads' spectacular timing emphasise the narrative and power it forward.

This is film making. Stripped clear of unnecessary extras, Fences demonstrates what can be achieved when you combine a good screenplay with a talented director and an outstanding cast. There's no blockbuster special effects, no plethora of A-list names teaming up to fight a common evil, but what is onscreen is spell-binding. Washington's not only skilled in front the camera, but behind it too. He knows August Wilson's play like the back of his hand and his familiarity with it allows him to finely tune every element of his film adaptation to be the best that it can. Staged and blocked like a play, Washington's camera glides in and out of rooms in the small house, lingering rather than cutting, providing the feeling that we are often looking through that fourth wall. It is effective, allowing the actors to really get involved in their scene, together, without interruption or cutaway.

Washington's achievement is simply astounding. For only his third directorial feature, Fences is an accomplishment to behold. Simple and powerful with stellar performances all round. This is an intelligent piece of cinema that doesn't try to be showy. It uses its medium of film to do the basics of storytelling, but it does those basics phenomenally well.

White People Are Bad.

There are so many films based on a very simple premise: One person goes against the convention to help a minority. We've seen it in Avatar, Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas and many, many more. A common way to portray this is with a historical story of a white person helping an ethnic minority despite society frowning upon it. That’s what The Help is.

Skeeter (Emma Stone) lives in Mississippi in the 1950s. She lives in a society where ‘coloured’ people are inferior and work as maids and gardeners to make their keep. She’s just got a writing job, writing a cleaning column for a local newspaper and asks her friend Elizabeth (Ahna O'Reilly) if she may get advice from her maid Aibileen (Viola Davis). As Skeeter grows close to Aibileen she realises how terribly Aibileen and her best friend Minny (Octavia Spencer) are treated by their employers, especially by Elizabeth’s friend Hilly (Bryce Dallas Howard). She decides she will write a book about being a maid in a racially unfair society from the perspective of the help. She starts interviewing Aibileen and Minny about what it is like working for Elizabeth, Hilly, and Minny’s new employer Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain). The book has to be written secretly as the interviews are against Mississippi law but Skeeter carries on regardless.   

I only chose this photo because I love Emma Stone.

There is not a single bad performance in this movie. Emma stone is absolutely outstanding in her main role. A different role to what we're used to from her. She is strong and just generally a good actress. If there wasn't such strong competition for Best Actress, she'd have a nomination. But the real stars here are Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis. Both of them take roles of characters in a very difficult time in history. A time where it is hard to put yourself in that position and imagine yourself suffering in the way that minorities did then. They both deserve an Oscar statue in their hands. The bit that really won me over for Viola Davis was a moment when a negro man is shot and the fear slowly creeps up on Aibileen until she's running in blind panic. I was utterly convinced by her performance. All of the supporting cast were fantastic as well. Jessica Chastain was stunning as the enthusiastic but self concious Celia Foote begging to be liked by the rest of her society. 

The help's jobs also including dragging their employers home.

 The writing is witty and charming but also entirely heartfelt and touching. The only issues I have with this film are ones involving the technical elements being a little to cliché and generic. I would like a little more riskw with my story but otherwise I have very little else to say. A generally good film that I would definitely recommend to all. 

Best Bit? Skeeter's mother's scolding of Hilly. Classic and uplifting.