Last week, I remembered the film adaptation of August Wilson’s play Fences. During dinner, we were talking about family, about parents’ relationships with their children. Scenes from the film came vividly to my mind, and we talked a bit about those scenes. Since then, I have been thinking nonstop about this magnificent work. I rewatched it this past week, and I would like to discuss Fences here.
The work centers on a family living in Pittsburgh in the 1950s. The family patriarch, Troy Maxson, makes decisions that cause his family to unravel. I have only watched the film. I haven’t seen the play performed on stage, but I really hope to one day.
I could write a book’s worth of essays on this work of art. The language is part poetry, part symphony. The story’s characters are so vivid. Every book or class on creative writing I’ve experienced in my life has accurately taught me that no fictional character can be as complex as any human being who ever lived. It’s just not possible.
Yet, the characters in Fences come closer than most characters I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. Each member of the family relates to one another with complex, layered feelings, the kinds of feelings I know we experience with our families: love, pain, hope, disappointment, grief, frustration, joy. The themes are powerful and gripping. This one work touches on so many matters, including inter-generational friction, fraught relationships between men and women, the tug-of-war between optimism and pessimism, and the consequences that the violence of American white supremacy and anti-Black racism can have on a Black family. As I’ve said, I can’t stop thinking about it, and I’m grateful for that, because when a story lives on in my head, I remember why I love what I love, why I do what I do.
The particular topic I will focus on in this discussion is adaptation. This is one of my interests, since I write in multiple genres. My main genres are fiction and essays, and I have studied and practiced poetry, playwriting, and screenwriting. I’m interested in the possibilities and limitations of different methods of delivering a story.
Fences was first a play and then adapted into a film. I’ve received insights from my favorite teachers about some of the differences between film and theater. I remember learning that there is a different energy for an audience member of a live performance than there is for a viewer of a filmed one. I also learned that theater has one degree of removal from the audience, the stage, while film has two degrees of removal: the camera and the projector.
From my limited personal experience (I have only watched a handful of live theater performances, and I hope to watch more soon), I do agree that live theater feels more immediate. The actors are right in front of you. Depending on the acoustics of the venue, your chest might vibrate from the actors’ voices.
Film, despite the greater degree of removal, does allow for its own possibilities. As I was researching the specific adaptation process from stage to screen for Fences, I found an excellent article and interview on the website Creative Screenwriting conducted by an editor for the site, Christopher McKittrick. McKittrick details the path the play took to become a film and interviews one of the producers of the film, Todd Black. According to the article and interview, Wilson himself wrote the screen adaptation of his play. One major change Wilson made was the inclusion of multiple new locations in the story. Transitioning to many different locations is much easier to do on screen than on stage. Wilson was hoping to get the film made years ago, but he sadly passed away long before the film was released. At some point during development, producer Scott Rudin came to Denzel Washington with the possibility of playing Troy Maxson in the film, but Washington wanted to understand the source material as much as possible before being in the film. He starred in a Broadway revival of the play, alongside Viola Davis as Troy’s wife Rose, Stephen McKinley Henderson as Troy’s friend Jim Bono, Mykelti Williamson as Troy’s brother Gabe, and Russell Hornsby as Troy’s eldest son Lyons. Reading this article, I remembered seeing advertisements for this revival, but I sadly missed it when it was playing. These actors came back for the film, and Washington took the director’s chair. Producer Todd Black explains that Washington had such a deep understanding of the play, he reinserted lines from the stage play that Wilson had removed for the screenplay.
I’m grateful Washington made that decision. As I’ve said, the language is incredible. Furthermore, since the actors returned for the film, their deep understandings of their characters allowed them to give towering performances.
I have no idea what different skills and techniques an actor would have to use when performing on stage versus performing on screen. I am just a humble film fan, and an amateur screenwriter and playwright. I am such an amateur that I haven't produced any of my stage plays or screenplays yet. All I can say, as an admirer, is that the actors brought their characters to vivid life. Any distancing caused by the medium of film was overcome due to their mastery of their craft. And the performances, along with the brilliant writing, are why I adore this film.
The close-up is a tool available to a filmmaker to draw the audience’s attention to a specific item, part of a setting, or character. When focusing on a character, the close-up can help convey the character’s emotions through the actor’s performance. Watching Fences, I became aware of the challenge and reward of acting in a close-up shot. Despite the difficulty, when done with skill, the results are incredible.
I’ll focus on just two scenes in this discussion. Early in the film, Troy and his younger son Cory, played by Javon Adepo, are doing chores in the backyard and talking. The conversation becomes fraught when Troy forbids his son to pursue college sports. Troy was an amazing baseball player, but never achieved the success and fame of Major League players because the Major League didn’t allow Black athletes to play. He doesn’t want his own son to suffer the same crushed dreams he had to endure. Another thing about Troy that is relevant to this scene: he is so bursting with life, in all its forms and variations. By that I mean, he is joking with a wide smile on his face one second, and angry with rage in his eyes the next. Washington skillfully navigates the shifting of movements of Troy’s feelings. He is a man who has seen the ugliest parts of life. At the climax of the argument between him and Cory, the boy asks his father why his father never liked him. Troy says there’s no rule or expectation that he has to like Cory. He lists all the things he has provided Cory: food for his stomach, a bed for his body, a roof over his head. He says he’s done all that not because he likes his son, but because it’s his duty as a father to provide for his son. As he speaks, and feelings rise, his eyes widen with sadness as he tells Cory that he’s given everything he has, and that liking Cory was never part of the bargain. He finishes by telling Cory to not care that people like Cory, but to only care that they fulfill their responsibilities to Cory.
The words are harsh and full of so much force, and in the close up of Washington’s wide, sad eyes, us viewers can read so much of Troy’s heart. No doubt, he’s acting harshly toward his son. But, in those eyes, we see how much his son matters to him. He wants his son to be prepared for the harsh world, to be strong in the face of everything life hurls at him. He’s worried about Cory, because Troy himself has been through so much and envisions the same terrible experiences happening to his son. In his own flawed way, he’s trying to help and do what he thinks is best. There’s such a sad irony to the scene; he wouldn’t speak with such depth of feeling if he didn’t care. Of course he cares about his son. The subtext is clear: whether or not he likes his son doesn’t matter, because he loves his son.
Such a sad, painful, raw moment. Washington’s performance is towering. And the entire cast matches those heights. There are so many more scenes I can discuss, but I’ll focus on one in which the incredible Viola Davis rocked me to my core.
About halfway through the film, Troy reveals to Rose while they’re in the kitchen that he has been having an affair with another woman, and that he is going to father that woman’s child. The look on Davis’s face is haunting. Her hollowed face illustrates how Rose’s world has fallen apart at this news. She leans against the counter to balance herself. Troy continues to try to explain himself as Rose stumbles into the backyard, full of shock and pain. Her husband says that he plans to continue the affair because it allows him to escape the soul-crushing reality of his life, a life he sees as having amounted to practically nothing. To this, Rose cries, “Well I’ve been standing with you! I been right here with you, Troy. I got a life too. I gave eighteen years of my life to stand in the same spot as you. Don’t you think I ever wanted other things? Don’t you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me? Don’t you think it ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities, that I wanted someone to make me laugh so that I could feel good? You not the only one who’s got wants and needs. But I held on to you Troy. I took all my feelings, my wants and needs and dreams, and I buried them inside you.” In close-up, Davis’s face trembles with the storm of her feelings of anger, grief, sorrow, betrayal. Her eyes are wide with fury, as her words hurl out of her like hail from a stormy sky. Writing about the scene as I recall it now, my fingers tremble; this is a testament to how Davis’s mastery of her craft allows her character’s feelings to leap off the screen and resonate with the audience.
My descriptions do not at all do justice to the brilliance of this film, to the power of its scenes. I am merely, futilely expressing my admiration.
The limits and possibilities of a particular medium require artists to use the tools available to craft the most impactful art they can. In the transition from stage to screen, I don’t imagine that Fences lost any of its power, thanks to the talented cast and crew. The towering performances bring Wilson’s words to life. I do hope to see the stage play, but I submit that I think this film version is definitive as a film adaptation. It is one of the most powerful and emotionally moving portraits of a family that I’ve ever seen in art. Of course, Fences would come up in a conversation about family during dinner. It’ll stay in my mind, and I cannot wait to watch this amazing film again and again.
I like ameer comments and anxious to see this movie