American Fiction

Anchored by a tour de force performance from Jeffrey Wright, writer and first-time director Cord Jefferson’s film is a confident work that delights in exploring thorny concepts through humour and clear-minded irreverence.

Cord Jefferson, who previously made episodes of Watchmen and The Good Life, marries a light touch and broad humour with affecting familial dysfunction and biting observations on race. Cultural crises are seldom so entertaining.

This satire shouldn't be laugh-out-loud funny ... but it is.

...part of the satire... is how Monk doesn’t really see the connection between his own life and the depictions of Black life that “flatten the Black experience,” as he puts it.

It started really sharp, but then it became really fuzzy.

The story works on two levels, first as a prickly critique of the pressures facing Black creatives. But equally satisfying is its depiction of the abrasive, complicated dynamics in a high-achieving family.

In Cord Jefferson's American Fiction, Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) is tired. He's a writer of dense books, intelligent and full of meaning and metaphor, but they don't fly off the shelf.

'American Fiction' works by keeping the satire sharp, but giving it a genuine humanity.

Satirical hall of mirrors, reflecting and refracting with its every canny move... all held aloft by the deliciously precise leading performance by the great Jeffrey Wright.

With a great cast that includes Oscar-nominated turns from Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown, it's a delightful, sharply-written blending of genres that results in one of the best films of 2023.