Good stuff. Well, not really. Heavy subject matter, if anything. And the retching sound at the end was all too real for me (as someone that once went through an OD).
Honestly, I do like the subject matter of fascism (and especially neo-fascism nowadays). There's the pre-fascist era, when it was just being developed, from the 1890s onward, and then there's when it was actually coined by Benito Mussolini onward. And then there's post-1945. Operation Paperclip, the rise of the white power movement in the 1980s and the terrorist attacks of the 1990s. And not to mention the "fourth empire" of the Ku Klux Klan during the Obama years.
I live in Virginia and that's where the fiasco at Charlottesville happened with people invoking the "great replacement theory" meme, and you can connect that to "white extinction anxiety" during the late 1800s to 20th century.
The movie evoked all these thoughts for me and the normalization of it. I see it with several of my family members too. We are living through the growth of a new fascism in the United States, I feel.
I saw American Fiction the day after the Oscars without having any idea it won one.
I liked it a lot, although it has issues. It's genuinely funny in places and sorrowful in others. It does a good job of bringing the act of writing to the screen, which is a very hard thing to do. Some of the satire is pretty spot on, but it's also based on a book from 20 years ago and can feel it in places. It does some not-unique but well executed fourth wall breaks which really tie into its general theme. The way it deals with some of the themes does sort of let the film off the hook for fence sitting on some themes though. The cast is bloody superb though and give great performances. It's pretty amazing looking considering it was made for no money (in movie terms) and in about four weeks or something.
Yeah, it seems like "Oscar-bait" but good "Oscar-bait." I may watch it.
I enjoyed that one. I thought it took a while setting up the story before getting to the premise but it was worth it.