Virginia Film Festival Diary, Day One: Rustin and American Fiction

Due to traveling challenges too boring to get into, my day one of the Virginia Film Festival was actually the fest’s day two. Sadly, I got in too late to see the opening film, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, but I did talk to enough people about it to know it was very well received, and the rumors that Carey Mulligan steals the movie continue unabated. 

While missing Maestro was certainly a disappointment, I would be absolutely churlish to complain after the evening I had with the two films I saw last night: Rustin and American Fiction. Not only are both films terrific, but coupled together they created a mini-Jeffrey Wright appreciation evening as he appears in both films. 

And who doesn’t want to appreciate Jeffrey Wright? In Rustin, Wright has a supporting role as Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who was a key figure in the Civil Rights movement as the House Representative for New York’s Harlem district. While Powell is a towering historical figure, his depiction in Rustin is hardly kind. As played by Wright, Powell is often petty, jealous, and even undermining of Bayard Rustin, the key organizer of the March on Washington where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his most famous speech. 

One of many aspects of Rustin that I admired is how the film shows the divisions within the movement, particularly between ambitious leaders like Rustin and King, and an overly cautious NAACP and the often derisive nature of Powell. But make no mistake, while Wright is reliably terrific as Powell, Rustin belongs to Colman Domingo, who delivers the performance of his life as the title character who has been all but written out of history due to his open homosexuality and an outdated felony conviction that was recently commuted by California Governor Gavin Newsom.

The buzz on Domingo’s performance has been nearly deafening, and I am here to confirm that my ears are ringing too. I can’t imagine a possibility that when the five nominees for Best Actor are named by the Academy that Domingo’s name won’t be among them. I’ve long admired Domingo’s work, to the point of wondering why he isn’t viewed from a loftier perch. That view and that perch have now been effectively reached. Domingo is a wonder as the happiest of happy warriors in the movement. I imagine that there’s a film version of Bayard Rustin’s life that could have been noble, stolid, and perhaps perfectly effective in its delivery. Rustin is not that film. In fact, it’s a frequently funny movie that shows how when someone believes completely in their cause and in themself, how there can be great joy in the struggle. 

At first when the film began I wondered if the almost jaunty jazz score was right for a film about such an important time in our nation’s history. But as the film continued on, I realized director George C. Wolfe (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom), and screenwriters Dustin Lance Black and Julian Breece were honoring not just Bayard’s role in the movement, but his very nature. 

That’s not to say that Rustin doesn’t take the subject matter of the March on Washington and Bayard’s role as the key organizer of the event seriously, it most certainly does. But in the post-film forum featuring producer Bruce Cohen, Cohen makes it clear that if the film weren’t entertaining, funny, and even joyful on an appropriate level, that it would be doing a disservice to who Bayard Rustin was.

Even in what might have been the film’s darkest moment: the outing of Rustin’s sexuality and the public revelation of his conviction for “sexual perversion” (which the film strongly implies Powell might have been behind), the film never succumbs to excessive grimness. When Rustin asks if there are members of the movement who are calling for his resignation after his felony status is made public in a manner most crass, and he is told “yes,” Domingo’s defiance is not only bold, but evocative of a man who would not apologize for being gay, for being himself. 

As Domingo’s Rustin states, “The day I was born black I was also born a homosexual. Either you believe in liberty and Justice for all, or you do not.” I found that moment to be the most powerful in the film, both for the strength of the delivery of the line, and for the magical eccentricity that Domingo brings to the words. 

History tried to wipe Bayard Rustin out. Colman Domingo is here to tell you, with this terrific film, and his remarkable performance that we must not. I can’t imagine anyone with as much sense as god gave an earthworm thinking any differently. 

I closed my evening with American Fiction, which gives the great Jeffrey Wright a rare lead role in a film that is incredibly entertaining while being socially significant in ways that I don’t know have ever been depicted on film. 

Wright has long been on the list of the finest actors to have never been nominated for an Oscar. And look, I’m pretty lousy at this prognosticating thing, but I’ve got a strong feeling that with American Fiction, that’s about to change. 

Written and directed by former journalist turned screenwriter Cord Jefferson, American Fiction is an extraordinary film about struggling author Thelonius Ellison (Wright) who writes a pandering book full of grotesque stereotypes about the black experience under a pseudonym. Thinking it just a lark, he asks his agent (played by the always terrific John Ortiz) to shop the book–fully expecting it to be rejected. When the opposite proves to be true, Ellison’s efforts to sabotage the book’s publication only leads to greater success and internal consternation.

American Fiction is a film operating at an almost ridiculous degree of difficulty. The film is full of tragedy, comedy, social commentary, satire, and somehow finds the time to be a great family drama too. The fact that this is Jefferson’s first time behind the camera as a director makes his achievement all the more staggering.

Dancing between tones tragic and comic like Baryshnikov, Jefferson’s control of the film is masterful in ways that would make even the most esteemed filmmaker envious. That being said, the key to the film is Jeffrey Wright, and don’t think Jefferson, who revealed that he fell in love with the idea of Wright playing the lead in the post-film forum, didn’t know it. Wright’s performance as a grump that you can’t help but root for is alternately low-key and frequently hilarious. The range Wright shows here is beyond elastic. Jefferson also made the salient and maddening point that Wright, despite being held in great esteem, hasn’t played a lead in a film since his breakout performance in Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat way back in 1996 (okay, there was the excellent thriller Hold the Dark from 2018, but the point being, it’s sadly uncommon to see Wright carrying a movie). A confounding fact that illustrates how underutilized Wright has been despite his widespread acclaim. After American Fiction, I can’t imagine the possibility of another quarter century going by without Wright headlining another film. 

It’s hard to say how widely seen American Fiction will be. It’s a complex film about race  that argues (very effectively) that Black life in art is far too often showcased in an incredibly limited fashion. Jefferson isn’t saying that films about poor people of color who turn to crime, or depictions of Black people as victims of slavery shouldn’t exist, only that there should be room for a fuller representation of the lives Black people live. 

In every way, this wildly ambitious film is a triumph. If it is viewed by enough Academy eyes, I can’t imagine the film not scoring Oscar nominations in multiple categories. Film, Director, adapted screenplay (the film is based on the novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett), actor, and the tremendous supporting performances (Sterling K. Brown and Erika Alexander being first among equals) should all be in play. 

Having interviewed Jefferson for Watchmen years ago, I’m going to tell people, “I knew him when.” Okay, I didn’t and don’t know him, but I talked to him well before now, and it’s going to be a blast watching him blow up. Because trust me, that’s about to happen.

American Fiction is the type of film that announces the arrival of a startlingly gifted talent that I do not believe can be denied. Even if the film only reaches the level of cult status, that cult is going to be rabid with affection for the movie, the man who directed it, and the actor whose name is above the title.

As it stands for me at this moment, American Fiction is the best film of the year. And if my opinion changes because of something I’ve yet to see, well, let’s just say 2023 will have been one hell of a year for movies.