When you binge a bunch of nominees and make snap judgments on them, you're bound to change your mind at least a little bit a few months or even years later. So, take this with a grain of salt, but Fences was my least favorite of the nine nominees for Best Picture this year. I know Keith and Danielle both liked it a lot more than I did, so maybe I was in the "wrong" frame of mind or something. But Denzel plays just a complete and utter asshole in this one, drunk and abusive and bitter and angry, proud as hell, and despite my best efforts to empathize with him, to understand the circumstances he was coming from - look, sixty years and a boatload of privilege separate my experience as a "man in America" from his - I just couldn't root for him. And maybe that's the point. And maybe Fences is a clever, bigger picture snapshot of how thoroughly the first half of the 20th century could fuck up a proud black man, and how "trickle down" injustice might lead such a man to take that anger out on his wife and his kid. Maybe we're not meant to sympathize with Denzel's character here. Maybe the point is to relate to said wife and kid - which I did, in no small part thanks to Viola Davis, who is as good as advertised here. I readily acknowledge all of this, but Fences just felt like a real bummer in a way I'm not sure it was meant to.
I don't even think this was a bad movie! Again, let's let the dust settle on the Academy Awards before committing this take to stone, but the Oscar nominations of 2016? Not bad!
My ranked list, by the way?
- Moonlight
- Manchester by the Sea
- Hell of High Water
- La La Land
- Arrival
- Hacksaw Ridge
- Lion
- Hidden Figures
- Fences
Subject to change, as always.
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