117 min | R | December 15, 2023 | Amazon MGM Studios
Cord Jefferson adapts Percival Everett’s novel into a razor-sharp satire about race, publishing, and the stories America wants to buy. Jeffrey Wright carries the whole thing on his back.
Thelonious “Monk” Ellison is a Black novelist and professor whose literary fiction sells poorly. His publisher wants something more “Black.” His agent wants something more commercial. So Monk writes a parody of the trauma porn that white audiences devour. He writes it angry and drunk and intending it as a joke. The publishing industry treats it as a masterpiece. The satire is obvious. The execution is not. Cord Jefferson’s script finds the specific ways that good intentions curdle into condescension and how the marketplace rewards exactly the kind of art that flatters its consumers.
Jeffrey Wright plays Monk with precision and exhaustion. He is a man who has spent his career refusing to perform his race for profit and now discovers that performing it is the only thing anyone will pay for. Wright makes the comedy land without losing the fury underneath. Sterling K. Brown plays Monk’s brother Cliff with charm and pain. Tracee Ellis Ross plays their sister Lisa. Erika Alexander plays Coraline, a neighbor and love interest who sees through Monk’s pretensions. Leslie Uggams plays their mother Lorraine with declining faculties and sharp instincts. The family scenes are where the film finds its heart.
Jefferson directs his first feature with confidence that belies the debut. The film moves between satire and family drama without the tonal shifts feeling forced. The script trusts the audience to hold multiple ideas in tension. Monk’s fake novel is both a cynical cash grab and a genuine expression of rage. The publishing executives who celebrate it are both well-meaning and grotesque. The film refuses to resolve these contradictions because the contradictions are the point.
This is a film about what happens when the market decides who you are and rewards you for becoming it. Monk’s dilemma is not whether to sell out. It is whether selling out and telling the truth can be the same act. Jefferson builds a comedy around that question and has the discipline not to answer it.