American fiction, Cord Jefferson's directorial debut and the newly popular best picture nominee, is a satirical comedy-drama that stars Jeffery Wright and Sterling K. Brown among others. It's story revolves around a frustrated writer-professor that is faced with a literary landscape that refuses to accept his highly stylized and complex writings in favor of a sheepishly crafted and offensively stereotypical so called "Black" books, works of fiction that romanticize the violence and crime as a centric trait of the african-american communities. "American fiction" through its satire deals with a myriad of social issues, it opposes Jeffery Wright's character Monk to a reality that does all but accept who he is as a person without judging the color of his skin. The American readers are mindlessly devouring stereotypically violent and delinquent so called black literature mistaking it for edgy and original, suppressing in the meantime black voices like his that only want to express their own selves without any à priori on their race or origin. He views those stereotypes and the tendency of some african american writers to capitalize on that as immorality and wasted potential for black representation even though it is clear that not all of that is pure fiction and dramatization, refusing to reconcile with the reality that both those things could be true.

Beyond all that however lies the best part of American fiction, the trials and tribulations of a man in the middle of a decaying family. This movie is at its core a heartbreaking story of a family in ruins, as distant as it ever was, of lost love and hopeless romance. The tragedy of Monk is that of a lost writer, a man who is convinced he is misunderstood and unappreciated all the while blocking everyone from reaching out. Highly nuanced and with a subtle physicality, Jeffery Wright's performance only accentuated this aspect of the lost character. He delivers a wonderful performance and accentuates the complexity of the themes this movie explores. Sterling K.brown's performance is tragic in all its aspects. The family dynamic is very poignant and edges on tension most of the time. The film's style is very simple, and purposely uncomplicated. It unfolds the story in its rawest form, with no use of visual metaphors and a very light touch of symbolism. What you see with "American fiction" is what you get: the story of a struggle, not only that of racial tension and social categorization, but that of a broken family, composed of broken people that were brought down by life, not because of bad luck or social oppression, but because life brings down even the strong. It is the story of a man trying to make sense of his life among the ruins. And deep down aren't we all.