Split Decision: “American Fiction”
Friday, March 1, 2024 at 6:00PM No two people feels the exact same way about any film. Thus, Team Experience is pairing up to debate the merits of this year’s Oscar movies. Here’s Lynn Lee and Cláudio Alves on American Fiction...
LYNN LEE: Hi Cláudio - looking forward to a friendly fisticuffs (is there such a thing? at TFE, yes!) on American Fiction, one of my favorite movies of 2023.
I have to admit I'm a little self-conscious about ranking it so high in a year filled with noteworthy films. It wasn't a cultural behemoth à la Barbenheimer. It's not the work of a known auteur or a rising one; it doesn't have the weird-cool vibe of a Poor Things or the wistful-cool cachet of a Past Lives. Visually, it's not particularly interesting. Thematically, it follows in the footsteps of other, similarly themed movies about Black artists confronting racial pigeonholing and stereotypes - from The 40-Year-Old Version to Bamboozled all the way back to Hollywood Shuffle - but made significantly more palatable (I won't say diluted) for mainstream audiences...