FENCES review
I keep reading that cinema belongs to just remakes, Disney owned franchises and cartoons. I think it’s true to a certain degree but goddamn, I’ve been watching a ton of films that don’t involve smart-ass, gravity-defying dudes wearing leather-clad pajamas, inevitably screaming “Hold on!” or “That’s gotta hurt!” during the course of their adventure.
One of these films was FENCES. I think it was up for some awards a year or so ago, and deservedly so. It reminded me of ORDINARY PEOPLE and TENDER MERCIES: flawed, fragile humans making it through any given day, one moment at a time. Parents, hellbent on holding true to their flawed principles, now at a crossroads, coming close to colliding with the sins they’ve compiled that are now spilling over onto their kids. ORDINARY PEOPLE and FENCES show two parents that cannot veer from their own fragile egos or facade of status. In TENDER MERCIES, you have a father realizing that kind of thinking leads to a dead-end street for everyone involved.
Denzel Washington’s character has a speech where he preaches the surface definition of fatherhood: to clothe his kids, to give them shelter, to go to work and make pay for their survival. But he willfully denies him what all children seek: unconditional love, acceptance, pride, support. I saw friends growing up who had fathers like this. They denied them the chance to dream and grow. Some may have done it for fear their sons would fail; some I imagine were jealous their sons would surpass them, that their kid’s success would only mock their own shortcomings. FENCES is sublime in this bitterness, a horror movie in the respect that our own fallacies can turn a loving home into a haunted house.
