Fences was released in North America on December 16, 2016, by Paramount Pictures. It received positive reviews and praise from critics for Washington's performance and direction, Davis's performance, the screenplay, pacing, cinematography, and emotional tone. Critics found the film "extremely powerful and effective."[3]
The film takes place in 1950s Pittsburgh at Troy Maxson's house that he lives in with his wife Rose and their son Cory. Troy works as a garbage collector alongside his best friend, Jim Bono, whom he has known for decades. Troy left home at 14 after beating up his abusive father, and became a robber to sustain himself. While serving time for killing a man during a robbery, he met Bono and showed himself to be a talented baseball player. He then played in the professional Negro leagues; but he never made it to Major League Baseball, which held a "color barrier" until 1947. He claimed to have survived near-fatal pneumonia in his youth by defeating Death in a wrestling match, upon which Death vowed to return for a rematch.
Troy's younger brother, Gabriel, sustained a head injury in World War II that left him mentally impaired, for which he received a $3,000 government payout that Troy subsequently uses as a down payment on a home for his family. Gabriel has since moved out to live across the street at Miss Pearl's house, so Troy no longer gets rent money from Gabe. This places the family under financial strain. Gabe sometimes gets in trouble with the law for his erratic behavior, so Rose suggests to Troy that Gabe might be better off residing in a hospital.
Lyons, Troy's oldest son from a previous relationship, visits him on payday to borrow money; this upsets him, as he believes a man has a responsibility to work hard to find his own way and provide for his family.
Rose later tells Troy that Cory is being scouted by a college football team, but he is dismissive of Cory's chances of playing professional football and refuses to sign the permission slip, saying he does not want him to fail in athletics as he did. Rose asks Troy to build a fence around their house, and he asks Cory to help him on Saturdays. Discovering Cory is not working at his after-school job at the A&P as it interferes with football practice, Troy demands that he return to the job, despite Cory's attempts to convince him that he will work weekends instead of during the week. Troy later finds out that Cory did not return to his job, and so tells the coach that he is no longer allowed to play. Cory lashes out, throwing his helmet at Troy, who warns his son not to disrespect him again.
After complaining about his company's racist employment practices, Troy is promoted to driving the garbage truck, becoming the first African-American to do so in Pittsburgh.
Bono finds out that Troy is cheating on Rose with Alberta, a woman he sees at Taylor's (a bar) and encourages him to break it off. Troy decides not break it off, as he later reveals this affair to Rose because he has got Alberta pregnant. This leads to an argument in which he aggressively grabs Rose's arm, where Cory intervenes and knocks Troy into the fence.
Months later, the baby is born, but Alberta unfortunately dies during childbirth. Troy brings his baby daughter Raynell home, and Rose agrees to raise her as her own, but refuses to accept him back into her life.
Cory is considering enlisting in the United States Marine Corps, having missed his opportunity to attend college. One day, when Cory returns home, an intoxicated and bitter Troy blocks his path and instigates a fight in which he swings at Troy with a baseball bat. Grabbing the bat from Cory, he drives him out of the yard. Disoriented, Troy once again challenges Death to come for him.
Six years later, Troy and Alberta's daughter Raynell is playing in the garden. Troy has died of a heart attack, and Cory, now a USMCcorporal, returns home, but informs Rose he will not attend the funeral. Rose admits to loving Troy despite his many flaws and pleads that Troy is still a part of him.
Cory reconsiders after sharing memories of Troy with Raynell. Lyons is serving three years in prison for forgery, and gets a furlough to attend the funeral. Similarly, Gabriel is released from the hospital to attend and reunites with his family as they all bid farewell to Troy. Gabriel fails to play his trumpet at first but succeeds on the third try for St. Peter to open the gates of Heaven for Troy, and the sun glistens over them.
The film was adapted from August Wilson's play Fences. Production culminated in the 2016 release of the film, over a decade after Wilson's death.
Previous attempts to adapt Fences for the screen had been fruitless, partly due to Wilson's insistence on an African-American director.[6] In a 2013 interview with Empire, Denzel Washington expressed his intention to star in and direct an adaptation of Fences, reprising his role from the 2010 Broadway revival of the play, which like the film, was produced by Scott Rudin.[7]
On January 28, 2016, it was reported that Rudin, Washington and Todd Black would produce a film adaptation of the play, directed by Washington and starring Washington and Viola Davis, reprising their roles from the 2010 revival that earned both actors Tony Awards.[8] Playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner came aboard to build on a draft written by Wilson before his death in 2005.[9] However, Wilson is the only credited screenwriter for the film,[10] while Kushner received a co-producer credit. Black explained that Washington insisted that they remain faithful to Wilson's work, saying, "The star of the movie is the screenplay and August Wilson's words. What Denzel said to me, to Scott, to all the actors, the cinematographer, and the production designer was, 'Don't make any decision without August Wilson's words leading you to make that decision.' Whatever you do, let the words inform your decision first. That's what we all had to abide by."[11]
Fences grossed $57.7 million in the United States and Canada and $6.7 million in other territories for a worldwide gross of $64.4 million, against a production budget of $24 million.[2]
Fences opened in five theaters in New York and Los Angeles on December 16, and was expected to gross $50–75,000 per theater in its limited opening weekend. It ended up making a total of $128,000, good for a per-theater average of $32,000.[29] The film went into wide release (2,223 theaters) on Christmas Day and grossed $6.7 million; over its first two days it made $11.5 million.[30] In its first full weekend the following week, the film made $10 million, finishing 6th at the box office.[31]
Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 92% based on 269 reviews, with an average rating of 7.60/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "From its reunited Broadway stars to its screenplay, the solidly crafted Fences finds its Pulitzer-winning source material fundamentally unchanged — and still just as powerful."[32] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 79 out of 100, based on 48 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[33] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.[34]
Ty Burr of the Boston Globe wrote, "You don't get groundbreaking cinema from Fences, but what you do get – two titanic performances and an immeasurable American drama – makes up for that."[35] Catherine Shoard of Guardian gave 4 out of 5 stars and praised the performances of Washington and Davis saying "Denzel Washington and Viola Davis set to convert Tonys to Oscars."[36] Terrl White of Empire gave a full 5 stars and calling the film "A simply extraordinary film without crashes, bangs and wallops but full of towering performances delivered with intelligence, power and heart."[37] A.O. Scott of New York Times gave a positive review and highlighted the performances of Washington and Davis by saying " If the sound were to suddenly fail — or if the dialogue were dubbed into Martian — the impact of the performances would still be palpable."[38] Owen Gleiberman of Variety also gave a positive review and praising the performances by saying "The acting is all superb."[39]
In a negative review, David Edelstein of New York wrote, "It's not cinematic enough to make you forget you're watching something conceived for another, more spatially constricted medium, but it's too cinematic to capture the intensity, the concentration, of a great theatrical event."[40]
Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. is an American actor, producer, and director. Known for his versatile work spanning over four decades of screen and stage, Washington has been regarded as one of the best actors of his generation, with The New York Times naming him the greatest actor of the 21st century in 2020. Washington has received a number of honors, including two Academy Awards, a Tony Award, three Golden Globe Awards, as well as the Cecil B. DeMille Award and AFI Life Achievement Award, and nominations for two Primetime Emmy Awards.
August Wilson was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of 10 plays, collectively called The Pittsburgh Cycle, which chronicle the experiences and heritage of the African-American community in the 20th century. Plays in the series include Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990), both of which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Joe Turner's Come and Gone (1988). In 2006, Wilson was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
Anthony Robert Kushner is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Lauded for his work on stage, he is most known for his seminal work Angels in America, which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, as well as its subsequent acclaimed HBO miniseries of the same name. At the turn of the 21st century, he became known for his numerous film collaborations with Steven Spielberg. He received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013. Kushner is among the few playwrights in history nominated for an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award.
Mykelti Williamson is an American actor best known for his roles in the films Forrest Gump, 12 Angry Men (1997), Con Air, and Ali, and the television shows Boomtown, 24, and Justified. In 2016, he portrayed Gabriel Maxson in Denzel Washington's acclaimed film adaptation of August Wilson's play Fences, reprising his role from the 2010 Broadway revival.
Fences is a 1985 play by the American playwright August Wilson. Set in the 1950s, it is the sixth in Wilson's ten-part "Pittsburgh Cycle". Like all of the "Pittsburgh" plays, Fences explores the evolving African-American experience and examines race relations, among other themes. The play won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 1987 Tony Award for Best Play. Fences was first developed at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's 1983 National Playwrights Conference and premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1985.
Viola Davis is an American actress and film producer. Known for her work across screen and stage, she has received numerous accolades and is one of three artists to achieve both the Triple Crown of Acting and the EGOT. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2012 and 2017. In 2020, The New York Times ranked her ninth on its list of the greatest actors of the 21st century.
Kenny Leon is an American director and producer. He is notable for his extensive work on Broadway, on television, and in regional theater. He has received a Tony Award and a Drama League Award as well as nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards and a Drama Desk Award.
The Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play was an annual award presented by Drama Desk in recognition of achievements in the theatre across collective Broadway, off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions in New York City. The award was one of eight new acting awards first presented in 1975, when Drama Desk retired an earlier award that had made no distinction between work in plays and musicals, nor between actors and actresses, nor between lead performers and featured performers.
The Detroit Film Critics Society is a film critic organization based in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 2007, and comprises a group of over twenty film critics. To become a member, the critic must have reviewed at least twelve films a year in an established publication, with no more than two different critics per publication admitted. It presents annual awards at the end of the year, for the best films of the preceding year.
Denzel Washington is an American actor known for his performance on stage and screen.
Jovan Adepo is a British-American actor. He made his feature film debut in the period drama Fences (2016), which was followed by roles in the psychological horror film Mother! (2017), the action horror film Overlord (2018), the period comedy-drama Babylon (2022), and the drama His Three Daughters (2023).
Saniyya Sidney is an American actress. Her accolades include nominations for three Black Reel Awards, two Critics' Choice Awards, an NAACP Image Award, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
The 15th Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Awards were announced on December 5, 2016.
The 2016 African-American Film Critics Association Awards were announced on December 13, 2016, while the ceremony took place on February 8, 2017 at Taglyan Complex, in Hollywood, California.
The nominations for the 17th Vancouver Film Critics Circle Awards, honoring the best in filmmaking in 2016, were announced on December 16, 2016. Manchester by the Sea led with six nominations, when Moonlight with four and La La Land with three nominations.
Viola Davis is an American actress and producer who has appeared in film, television, and on stage. She received her equity card with her stage debut in 1988 with August Wilson's The Pittsburgh Cycle play Joe Turner's Come and Gone production of Trinity Repertory Company. After graduating from Juilliard School in 1993, Davis went on to perform several roles on stage in the 1990s, earning Theater World Award for her role in Seven Guitars (1996). In the same year, Davis guest-starred in the procedural drama series NYPD Blue, and made her film debut with a brief one-day role alongside Timothy Hutton in The Substance of Fire. In 1998, she appeared in Richard Benjamin's television movie The Pentagon Wars, and Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight, before returning to the stage with an Obie Award winning titular performance in Off-Broadway Everybody's Ruby (1999).
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is a 2020 American drama film directed by George C. Wolfe and written by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, based on the 1982 play of the same name by August Wilson. The film stars Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Glynn Turman, Colman Domingo, and Michael Potts. Inspired by the career of Ma Rainey, an influential blues singer and the title character, the film dramatizes a turbulent recording session in 1920s Chicago.
↑ Mendelson, Scott (December 26, 2016). "Box Office: 'Sing' Soars, 'Passengers' Recovers, 'Fences' Breaks Out On Christmas Day". Forbes. Retrieved December 30, 2016. expanded ... to 2,223 theaters yesterday after keeping it in limited release for the last 10 days. The August Wilson adaptation earned a smashing $6.688 million opening day, ... long term predictions are challenging for this $20–$25m production ... but this is a smashingly impressive single-day debut for a film that will absolutely be a big part of the Oscar conversation. It has earned $11.528m thus far.
↑ Hunt, Bill. "The Digital Bits". Fences official, plus the 4K floodgates are opening: Gladiator, Bridge on the River Kwai & more are on the way. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
↑ David Edelstein (December 23, 2016). "Denzel Washington's Fences Gets Stuck Between Stage and Screen". Vulture. New York Magazine. Retrieved December 30, 2016. There's a literal fence at the center of Fences, but it doesn't resonate onscreen the way it does onstage. It's not a living metaphor. Troy, a gifted baseball player, was fenced-out of the major leagues when he was young but was too old to strut his stuff when he emerged after a long stint in prison. Now, he sees fences everywhere. The fence that he's building, though, underscores the barrier he has erected between him and his sons, one from each of his marriages.
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