FENCES at Wahnfried

At Wahnfried

On Sunday 29th at 4pm we have the film FENCES (2h10mins) produced and directed by Denzel Washington and written by August Wilson, based on his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1985 play.
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 92%. The site's critical consensus reads, "From its reunited Broadway stars to its screenplay, the solidly crafted Fences finds its Pulitzer-winning source material fundamentally unchanged — and still just as powerful."
With his dreams of becoming a successful professional baseball player and one of the first coloured athletes in the sport cruelly crushed, 53-year-old Troy Maxson, a working-class toiler who struggles to make ends meet working as a garbage collector in mid-1950s Pittsburgh, is now reduced to an embittered patriarch. But still, Troy is also a proud, high-spirited man who is devoted to his wife for 18 years, Rose, streetwise and tenacious enough to have the future of his family planned and protected under the roof of their humble and hard-earned house. On the other hand, although this may be true, Troy has well-kept skeletons in the closet, which coupled with his suppressed emotions stemming from the town's racist past, prevent him from allowing anyone to benefit from everything that he was denied, including his very son Cory, an aspiring college football player. Sometimes, we build fences to keep others out, while other times, we build them to keep ourselves in.
Ty Burr of the Boston Globe wrote, "You don't get ground-breaking cinema from Fences, but what you do get – two titanic performances and an immeasurable American drama – makes up for that." Terrl White of Empire gave a full 5 stars and calling the film "A simply extraordinary film without crashes, bangs and wallops but full of towering performances delivered with intelligence, power and heart."
“If you don't mind a film that’s a play with the limitations of a play then this is a good film. The story is slow to unfold or so it seems. There is an awful lot of talking. an awful lot of people sitting in a yard or a bar or in the kitchen. It’s very static but the acting and the story is not static. It takes you back to a time when racism and prejudice dominates the main characters lives, even those characters we don’t see. It blights and it corrodes three generations and more. The light comes in the form of violas character, strong beautiful and serene. It’s a must watch film that you will have to sit and listen to with your ears and your heart.’’Amazon.co.uk reviewer