Looking back on Fences

A quick heads up to anyone that has not seen the movie "Fences." This post does have some minor spoilers in so you do not have to read if you have not seen the movie yet. This is just a post to vent my feelings on the film and the characters within it. It's going to be a little informal as well.

So I just finished watching Fences with my family, staring Denzel Washington as Troy Maxon, the main character of the story and the main character to be explored. The narrative takes place within 1950's America, with Troy going through his day to day life as Sanitation Officer (garbage guy).

In summary, the whole movie revolves around Troy's decisions in his family life, as he tries to make good the cards that life has dealt him. These "cards" being his less than ideal childhood with his single father, surviving alone as a petty thief on the streets, and not having the opportunity to play major league baseball when the league was first beginning to accept black players into their newly integrated teams.

Now the only reason I ever decided to write something down about this movie because it did strike a chord in me while I was watching. And not because of Denzel. Don't get me wrong, Denzel was a master in his role. It's because he was so good that a certain aspect of this movie struck me so deeply as it did.



Troy had a lot of hang-ups, towards white people, his father, his first, and second son. Speaking on his second son, Cory, had the most unfulfilled aspirations in this story.


In the beginning, I felt that Cory really wanted to understand and emulate his father, at least where he believed it count, sports. I figured Cory to be a star at his game, football, and he tried to approach his father on many occasions through the sport Troy had once loved, baseball. All attempts failed. These attempts only managed to drive a wedge further down between two until it seemed it seemed that there was no reconciliation between them.

Now, Cory is a character that I can relate a lot too, especially in the sense of damn near harmful conflict between him and his father. So it hurt me to see him go through so much in a time span of two hours and nineteen minutes. And a lot of the crap that he did go, the majority of the audience, including the older members of family, found it laughable when his father would vocally tear into his son for almost no justifiable reason. It seemed like no one really empathized the unfairness of Troy on Cory besides the surface showing of a father "disciplining him" or forcing onto him some lesson that the "white man won't let a negro by in sports" so there's no point in trying.

To cut a long story short, Troy kicks Cory out of his house after a tense conflict between the two. This was where my sympathy ended for Troy, as there was no way that the narrative could reconcile Troy in my eyes.

The film skips a couple of years into the present where Cory has now joined the Marines and finally seems as if he's growing into a man. However, he still has his father's shadow looming over his conscious. As Cory was talking with Rose, his mother, he says that he wasn't planning on attending his father's funeral, which albeit not moral on Cory's part in the way of family, but makes sense after all of the things that his father had done to him have been considered. However, his mother chastises him, saying that disrespecting his father would never make him a man. She instead advises him on finding peace with good things that his father was able to give him, not the bad.

Cory sits down on the steps with his younger sister, Raynell, Troy's illegitimate daughter, and begin singing the song that there father would, giving some hope that Cory would come to that peace.

Not actual scene from movie. On-Stage play image from google.

The way that Cory's story arc played out was nothing less than amazing. I've never read or seen the play to compare how close the movie was to the source material, but I can already tell that the source would be an awesome experience.

However, I can not deny the amount of "makes me feel some type of way" (M.M.F.S.T.W) vibes I got from this. Mostly on the fact that this narrative wants me to believe that Cory takes on being slighted and kicked out of his home by his father only to come back to have his mother rebuke his built up anger towards his father, with little to no closure on Cory. Only to just "take the best of what Troy offered him."

So, I as the viewer, have to just accept that that is way that matters like this should be?

Are you serious?

No, I simply refuse to believe that every act that Troy committed to his family, especially Cory, was just magically made tolerable when he passed on. Troy still cheated on Rose and Troy still fractured his son's future and relationship with Troy in ways that a father never should. Maybe some people can take this as a "you'll understand when you get older" type of thing, but I'm calling complete B.S.

If you have a differing opinion please let me know in a comment. I would appreciate. 

Thank you for reading this far!