Introduction
For this creative, analytical essay, I decided to take the work of Fences, which proved itself worthy in many iterations. As for comparison, I chose to use the movie by Denzel Washington and the original play from the film, the play by August Wilson. Both works are fascinating, and each of them can be creatively supplemented, taking into account their genres. However, I want to explain the choice of this work precisely as a creative adaptation. Fences perfectly represent how interesting the transfer of work from stage to screen is for analysis; an example is the film language of the film by Denzel Washington and the play’s narrative by August Wilson.
Denzel Washington’s Fences Film Based on Wilson’s Play
Some of the most powerful scenes in Denzel Washington’s Fences never show the narrative but allow it to be understood through the mastery of the visual presentation. Theatrical dialogues in their classical form are a significant risk to the silver screen—the plays mention behind-the-scenes incidents, deaths, romances, quarrels, and other narrative elements. The filmmaker always has a peculiar advantage over the theater director. A filmmaker can edit a line by reshooting a scene or transforming the text into a visual narrative. Instead of, for example, presenting memories as context from the mouths of the characters, the movie can convey this through a flashback scene. Talking is not always a negative thing; in this case, the story demonstrates something. The cinema audience only needs their imagination and the intensity of the words to go off when the correct performer can deliver the lines. This is what I find an interesting element for the creative analysis and addition of both the film and the play.
Fences is a film set in the mid-twentieth century about a black guy named Troy. He has two boys from his connection with Rose, one of them is a high school athlete called Corey, and the other is a vagabond musician (Washington). Troy despises almost every aspect of his existence. Everything has become about him and his responsibilities because he feels he was denied the opportunity to play professional baseball. After all, he is a black man in American history’s challenging and racist period. Troy makes selfish decisions that influence his wife and family over the period of 6 or 7 years. He’s building a fence the entire time, which is a metaphor for his internal fence-building and tries to scare death away.
First and foremost, play adaptations are not doomed in the cinematic realm as they can look for a first view. Denzel Washington’s film Fences, based on August Wilson’s play, might have easily been a better film than it was, with consistently inspired performances rather than just spectacular ones. Despite his evident passion, Washington’s shooting of the play is significantly less innovative and unique than Wilson’s invention; the performances mimic theatrical ones and lack the distinguishing exhilarations of cinema acting. By contrast, the virtuosity of theatrical craft is reassuring in its transmissibility and manageability; it’s virtually measurable, allowing critics to play teacher and issue a numerical grade. However, the best cinematic acting is too enigmatic to quantify.
The majority of the action in Fences takes place in one family’s backyard and house in Pittsburgh in the mid-1950s—the Maxsons’. Troy Maxson, a 53-year-old sanitation worker, is battling discriminatory rules that ban him from becoming a driver and keep him as a hauler (Washington). He is a dynamically active guy who is also fighting his past—a former baseball great who could not play in the major leagues due to segregation; he forbids his younger son, Cory, from participating in high school football and getting recruited for college football. He is harsh with his oldest son, Lyons, a failing musician, and he assists in the care of his older brother, Gabe. The latter was injured in WWII and is mentally disabled (Wilson 41). Bono, his best friend, and coworker from his younger and more problematic days, is frequent in his life. Above all, Troy’s existence revolves around his eighteen-year-old wife, Rose, whose unwavering commitment to him is put under strain when he has an affair—and a child—with another woman.
Despite its realistic locations and those times that push the action into the street and farther into the city, Fences maintains a theatrical feeling of scenes and acts; it may as well have a curtain to divide them. Position in the frame is as essential as diction; distance from the camera is as vital as movements; angles, light, attire, and décor are as crucial as emotion in film acting. It is also a question of tone: creating a genuine, coherent atmosphere that incorporates both what’s on camera and what’s behind the camera, rather than a fictitious world onscreen. A lousy adaptation gives an impression of reliance on the source material without making that link apparent or deepening it in any meaningful way. Washington, as director, neither underlines and heightens the theatrical premise’s artifice nor counteracts it by emphasizing the players’ physicality.
Conclusion
Based on all of the above, being in the production of this kind of film, I would first deal with the visual and auditory parts of the narrative. The film lacks the tension of silence when the film allows the viewer to feel deep pressure. Solid and heavy, the effect of silence always shows itself well in the auditory part of such a narrative work. Moreover, in a theatrical production, based on the genre’s characteristics, the element of silence is present and working. Given the possibilities of the language of the visual complementing the sound accompaniment, the film can present such features vividly and emotionally.
Moreover, I find it essential to work with visuals. Even though Washington’s visionary work in the film is excellent, I have a lot of ideas. The first is the connection of the scenes with a shared narrative and the amount of visual representation of the story, which is good. However, the film is too concentrated on textual history, like a play. Of course, the best part of Fences is the dialogue outside of the drama—the opening conversation between Troy and Bono on the back of the garbage truck and its riffing and ribald continuation in the Maxson backyard with Rose. Troy’s conversation with Bono and Lyons about growing up in the Deep South amid family trouble turns into Troy’s great monologue about how he came to be on his own at the age of fourteen, walking to Mobile and facing segregation injustices (Wilson 72). However, I would dilute the presentation of these story elements with a visual narrative instead of text.
Works Cited
Washington, Denzel. “Fences.” Movie, uploaded by Netflix, 2017. Web.
Wilson. Fences. New York, Plume, 1986.