Screenit troy12/25/2022 ![]() ![]() (The character was originally portrayed on Broadway by James Earl Jones.) Troy and his dreams have had a hard time: after outrunning an abusive childhood and a troublemaking past for a shot at athletic glory, he aged out of his prime before Major League Baseball could integrate. Every choice he makes as a director here is designed to underline, rather than complement, the script, which is so faithful it bears only Wilson's name.Īs he did onstage in the recent Broadway revival, Washington embodies the lead role of Troy, a former baseball player in the Negro League, now working as a garbage collector in Pittsburgh. His approach is that of devoted student trying to learn from a long-gone mentor. Denzel Washington is behind the chair, his third go-around as a director after Antwone Fisher and The Great Debaters. We must see him as a man who bleeds, heavily, and often from self-inflicted wounds.Įleven years after his 2005 death, Wilson finally gets his wish in perhaps the most widely acclaimed black actor of a generation. ![]() For it to work onscreen, a director needs to see this character as fully formed, not merely a product of his environment or a vehicle for sermonizing. Fences gives us a working-class black family in the 1950s, with particular focus on a father whose own rough go at life informs but doesn't fully excuse his behavior in his own household. Looking at the dynamics in the play, Wilson's need to see a filmmaker understand them as he did was understandable. Photo credit: David Lee/Paramount PicturesĪll his life, playwright August Wilson resisted any efforts to mount a screen adaptation of Fences, his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 work, because he insisted it could only be helmed by a black director. Denzel Washington as Troy Maxson and Viola Davis as Rose Maxson in Fences ![]()
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