In a world captivated by the ordinary, American Fiction stands out as art marked by its originality. It would be a travesty - or at least tragic - to characterize it as a simple metanarrative. The truth is this: Cord Jefferson and Percival Everett went for the killshot to our prevailing intellectual tradition. Indeed, the bullet made contact and proved that contrarianism isn't what's dead. In fact, the film shares more in common with string theory than postmodernism in how it aims to tie the self to the collective. The artists' combined efforts are mesmerizing, but they should not be a distraction from the art. The duo offers us all a masterclass in storytelling - effectively weaving together, with delicacy, a countless number of narrative lines that deeply resonate with our popular discourse. Perhaps the most evident theme is the critique of white fragility, which had crowds in my theater - a mostly white group - rolling over in their seats. Yet, Jefferson, with the help of Everett's Erasure, managed to balance narrative lines against one another and do so poignantly as they teetered between their critiques of contemporary whiteness with problematizing arrows aimed at the belly of the Academy's characterization of black identity. Who would've thunk it? Could we have been missing something all these years as we zoomed in on the expressions of individual cultural actors in our society? Dare I suggest that there seems to be a hidden meaning in the art? For me, the film accentuated the balancing act - or perhaps it's more of a dance - that we all do as we navigate a social theater where individual identities dance among a collective identity. To zoom out on what it could mean for all of us: clearly, this is an area in which US filmmakers, in particular, and American creators, more generally, can assert new leadership on the world stage. Whether you are a writer or a filmmaker, an academic or a doctor - we each breathe the rarefied air of our melting pot - and do as we live between the Pacific and Atlantic. Perhaps in the age to come, we will all embrace what separates us from East and West as we each dance with our brother's keeper, irrespective of where they are from or the color of their skin.

Score: (93/100)