Fences

On New Year's Eve I went to see Fences, an adaptation of August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis.  Troy Maxson (Washington) is a sanitation worker in 1950s Pittsburgh living with his wife Rose (Davis) and his son Cory (Jovan Adepo).  The fence he is perpetually building with his son becomes a metaphor for how trapped he feels and he lashes out against the people in his life.  Troy is a despicable character who does despicable things such as sabotaging his son's chance for a football scholarship because he is bitter about his own lost opportunity to play baseball, cheating on his wife and forcing her to take in his illegitimate daughter, and swindling his disabled brother (Mykelti Williamson) out of his war pension.  It was very difficult for me to watch Denzel Washington, an actor I have always liked and admired, play such an unsympathetic character but his performance is brilliant.  The same could be said of Viola Davis.  I had difficulty with her character, as well, because, although she confronts her husband about his behavior (in an incredibly powerful scene which, no doubt, secured her the Golden Globe), she becomes his apologist after his death.  In the end it is a movie about a flawed man who ultimately gets redemption for hurting the people in his life because he himself has been hurt.  I didn't like this resolution because, in my opinion, he doesn't deserve redemption.   Despite the lauded performances of Washington and Davis, it's not a movie I would recommend.