I watched this film the other day, which had magically landed on Prime – a relief for me who, just a few weeks ago was about to fork out money to watch in the cinema. Since it won an Oscar this year (Best Adapted Screenplay) my expectations were naturally high – why not read on to find out if they were met 😉.

This film centres around academic, Theolonious (let’s call him Theo for short). Like most academics he writes books for income, as well as lectures. The problem with his most recent book idea? It hasn’t been picked up by publishers. At the start of the film, we seem him arguing with his colleague who boasts that in the time it’s taken Theo to write one book he’s published several.

At some point, he comes across author Sintara Golden, (played by Issa Rae), who has written a book which is received much praise. He scoffs, since he feels the book is stereotypical and essentially beneath him. But later, primarily as a joke, he decides to write a similar book. He leans on racial stereotypes to create a novel which he thinks as a Black man, the world would expect him to write, but which he refuses to. The problem is, it’s floated past publishers and they LOVE it. What unfolds next is an amusing unravelling, as Theo is forced to ride out his lie, the more popular this book – which he doesn’t even like – becomes more popular in the literary community.

My take

There’s so much to dive into around this film – it makes rich material for a post-film discussion, I would say. A key theme that runs throughout is if it’s possible to be a successful artist and not compromise on your vision. The author Sintara’s book has received much acclaim for a book which focuses on what would be seen as stereotypically Black content. In other words features what Blackness might look like from a white perspective. When we hear her reading out an excerpt of the book at an event Theo is at, it’s in a broken type of English, reminiscent of Celie’s voice in The Colour Purple. An indicator that her Black characters are uneducated.

Her book’s acclaim, Theo would very much like to have but as a novelist who refuses to compromise, he doesn’t (much to his agent’s anguish). Well, that’s until his satirical novel unexpectedly takes off! There’s an interesting scene with Theo and Sintara which captures this theme well. Where he asks her about her book and what he sees as is ‘Black trauma porn’ nature. She eventually says something along the lines of – ‘you have to give the people what they want’. What I took from that, if you’re an artist living under capitalism and your art is your income, unless incredibly lucky in some way, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to create art that just pleases YOU. You’ll have to be thinking about the demand for your art and audience; all of which will dictate how it’s received. Essentially, you’re creating a product.

In the same scene with Theo and Sintara – Theo confides to Sintara that he wasn’t a big fan of her book, simply because he feels like it leans into a singular narrative told around Black people that he feels is overdone. There’s so many other experiences to write stories about! Sintara points out, that she actually put a lot of hard work and research into the book. Plus, Black people do suffer, so that narrative will always need to be told, and in doing so relate to many. I found this to be an interesting discussion, mainly because both have valid points, although I lean more toward Theo’s perspective in this instance.

Other thoughts

These days with many films, I find myself either captivated by the characters or storyline but rarely both. In this case, it was the latter – the storyline had me fairly invested but the characters, not so much. I struggled to reconcile, all Theo’s family stuff (he has a fairly tumultuous relationship with his brother, his father is dead and his mother is recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s) with all the shenanigans happening with his book. My inkling is that maybe they aren’t meant to be reconciled and if so – fair enough. I guess the idea is that seeing scenes with his family allows us to make better sense of Theo’s character – see him beyond his literary ambitions and rage at the system.

Overall…

7.5/10 – It has a level of absurdity to it that I liked and got used to over time – it even got an occasional laugh from me (even though comedy isn’t its main focus). It also covered a lot of interesting themes smartly, so I appreciated that.

You can watch the trailer here.

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Have you watched the film? Let’s compare notes – let me know what you think 😊